13 suspects arrested in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - iraq’s top security chiefs said Sunday that the U.S. military had warned them in advance about an imminent attack, but the tip came too late to act on before last week’s deadly Baghdad bombings against government sites.

An Interior Ministry official, meanwhile, said 13 al-Qaida-linked suspects have been detained in connection with last week’s bombings, the third of their kind since August.
At least 127 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in the bombings.

The disclosure of the U.S. tip and the announcement on the arrests came on the third day of a grilling by Iraq’s parliament of government officials on the security breaches that allowed Tuesday’s attacks to take place in some of the most heavily protected sections of the Iraqi capital.

Trying to contain some of the political fallout, Iraq’s interior minister hinted during a parliamentary session of the arrests.

“There are 13 coffins waiting for criminals implicated in Tuesday attacks, and those criminals will be tried and convicted,” the minister, Jawad al-Bolani, told lawmakers.

He did not elaborate, but an official at his office later said al-Bolani was referring to the 13 arrests of al-Qaida-linked insurgents whom he said helped mastermind the bombings.

They are the first arrests confirmed after Tuesday’s blasts, the official said.