IRAQ - Dec 26 - Videotape Describes Bomb Plan.

The radical Islamic group Ansar Al Sunnah that claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack on a US base releases videotape showing three militants describing their plans to carry out the suicide bombing, which killed more than 20 people. The footage includes what appears to be the attack itself, showing a fireball rising up and a torn white tent. In the Dec 21 attack, a bomber - probably dressed in an Iraqi military uniform - slipped into a dining tent packed with soldiers eating lunch and set off his explosives at Marez base on the outskirts of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq, according to US officials. The group Ansar Al Sunnah issued a statement soon afterward, saying it had carried out the attack. In the new video, which carried a Dec 20 date on the footage, three guerrillas clad in black, wearing face masks and carrying AK-47 automatic rifles described their plans. One of the men read a statement saying another of the three, identified as Abu Omar Al Musali, would carry out the attack by breaking into the base through the perimeter fence. The man reading the statement later embraced the bomber, who wore an explosives-laden vest. "He will take advantage of the change of guards. We have been observing their schedule for a long time. This lion will then proceed to his target and we will take advantage of lunch time. He will storm the dining room where the crusaders and their allies are gathered", the man said. The authenticity of the video, which appeared on an Islamic Web site on the Internet that in the past had carried footage of attacks on US troops, could not be independently verified. The man reading the statement gestured with a rifle bayonet toward a hand-drawn map of the base. He also addressed a warning to Pres Bush, and PM Tony Blair of Britain and PM Ayad Allawi of Iraq. "Let Bush, Blair and Allawi know that we are coming and that we will chase them all away, God willing", the man said. A later outdoor video image, shot on Dec 21, when the attack occurred, shows a fireball rising from the distance with the accompanying sound of the explosion. A final image, shot from a vehicle driving past the base, shows the torn white tent that served as the base mess hall. The dead included 18 Americans - 13 service members and five US civilian contractors - and three Iraqi guardsmen and one unidentified "non-US person", according to figures released by the US military. Of the 69 wounded, 44 were US military personnel and the remainder US civilians, Iraqi troops and other foreigners. In violence Dec 26, a Turkish truck driver and 13 Iraqis were killed in ambushes and explosions. Three US soldiers were also wounded in a bomb attack on their patrol in Mosul. Abdel Hussein, of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation, died when three masked men opened fire as he left his Baghdad home, the party said. A civil defense colonel and an aide were killed when gunmen opened fire outside the officer's home in southwestern Baghdad, the police said. And north of the capital, a guardsman was killed and a civilian wounded when a makeshift bomb exploded as a convoy passed on the road between the insurgent strongholds of Samarra and Dhuluiya, the security sources said.