War on Iraq will create "100 Bin Ladens", the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, warned yesterday as hundreds of Arab volunteers streamed to Baghdad pledging "martyrdom operations" against US and British forces.
The remarks by the president, a friend of the west but an opponent of the drive to topple Saddam Hussein, underlined mounting alarm across the Middle East about the dangerously radicalising effect of the conflict.

With the Arab media highlighting claims from the Iraqi capital that thousands of men from more than 20 countries were prepared to die, the prospect of mass suicide attacks is emerging as a new ingredient in an already volatile mix.

"When it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences," Mr Mubarak told Egyptian soldiers in the city of Suez. "Instead of having one [Osama] bin Laden, we will have 100."

Iraq has boasted that the Arab volunteers will follow the example of Ali Hammadi al-Namani, the soldier identified by Baghdad as having killed four US soldiers in a suicide bombing near Najaf on Saturday.

Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, said yesterday that 5,000 Arabs had travelled to Iraq to fight.

"Most of them want to train on martyrdom attacks," he said.
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