BBC News Online: World: Middle East

Iraq hails attack on US

Al-Iraq says the myth of America was destroyed

As condolences poured in from everywhere - even from Libya and Iran - Iraq rejoiced, saying the terror attacks were a "lesson for all tyrants and oppressors" and the fruit of American crimes.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, newspapers were unanimous in their condemnation of the attacks, but al-Iraq wrote: "It is the prestige, arrogance and institutions of America that burn."

The paper said it would be difficult for the US to find the perpetrators of the attack, since America has made so many enemies.

"Thousands if not a million or billion hands were behind these attacks," it said.

The paper said America has only itself to blame.

"Brutal America, suffering from illusions of grandeur, has inflicted humiliation, famine and terrorism on all of the world's countries and today it reaps the fruits of its arrogant and stupid policy," said an official Iraqi statement.

Deep hatred

Most Iraqi citizens, living under a UN-imposed embargo for 11 years, have developed a deep hatred for the US.

The embargo followed the 1991 Gulf War, when a multinational coalition led by Washington drove Iraqi troops out of Kuwait after seven months of occupation.

The official statement, read on television Tuesday night, said: "the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity."

The statement said the attack was, among others, a result of America's support of Israel.

"The destruction of the centres of American power is the destruction of American policy, which has veered from human values to align itself with the Zionist world, to continue to massacre the Palestinian people."