The Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of Islamic Jihad, “regales our people with the news of the arrival of the first batch of its suicide attackers in Baghdad,” a statement sent to AFP said.

The statement said they would be fighting alongside Arab volunteers against “the new Mongols that are invading the capital of the Islamic caliphate,” in a reference to the 13th century sacking of Baghdad.

It followed an Islamic Jihad attack in the Israeli town of Netanya yesterday which killed the bomber and injured 30 people, and which the group said was “a gift from Palestine to the heroic people of Iraq.”

On Saturday, four US soldiers were killed near Najaf in southern Iraq by an Iraqi who blew up a car bomb at a checkpoint in the first suicide attack of the war.

“Iraq, we heed your call,” Islamic Jihad’s statement said, adding that “it is one war from Najaf to Tulkarem and from Jenin to Baghdad,” referring to Palestinian West Bank towns as well as the Iraqi cities.

Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdallah Shallah repeated on Al-Jazeera television that suicide bombers had reached the Iraqi capital, and called on others to “infiltrate into Iraq and to Najaf to carry out attacks on the American occupation forces.”

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said Saturday that thousands of Arab volunteers were flowing into the country to help Baghdad fight the war launched by the United States and Britain 11 days ago.

Iraqi army spokesman Gen. Hazem Al-Rawi followed that up with a statement that more than 4,000 volunteers had come from across the Arab world, ready to follow in the footsteps of the Iraqi officer who killed the US soldiers on Saturday.

Al-Jazeera said yesterday that an unknown number of Syrians had arrived in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to fight.

Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in the Gulf, said he found it “remarkable” that Iraqi authorities would take credit for Saturday’s suicide car-bombing that killed four of his troops.

Addressing reporters in Qatar, he said that US troops operating in Iraq would from now on “exercise caution,” notably in approaching civilian vehicles.

“It’s not at all illogical that a dying regime would undertake such acts as suicide bombing,” Franks said at a briefing at Camp As-Saliyah, where he is directing the US-British invasion of Iraq.

“Remarkable though is the connection all the way to the top of the Iraqi regime where...that attack was just endorsed by those in power in Baghdad. Remarkable,” Franks said.