Key Sunni insurgent group condemns Iraq market bomb

BAGHDAD, July 9 (Reuters) A prominent Iraqi insurgent group has condemned a Saturday truck bombing blamed on al Qaeda that killed 150 people, signalling a growing rift between hard line Islamist militants and home grown nationalist fighters.

''These acts are in breach of the Koran ... the deliberate killing of one believer has enormous consequences, so how can you kill tens or hundreds!'' said the statement, signed by the Jihad and Reform Front and emailed to Reuters today.

It was not immediately possible to verify conclusively the authenticity of the statement. But it also appeared on a website that the Front has used before.

The truck bombing in the Shi'ite town of Tuz Khurmato in northern Iraq was the second deadliest single attack since the US-led invasion of 2003. It was typical in the scale of devastation to attacks claimed by al Qaeda in the past and Iraqi officials were quick to blame the Islamist militants.

''We call on all Jihadi groups ... to announce their innocence from these criminal acts, condemn them and expose the people who stand behind them,'' the Jihad and Reform Front said.

It is rare for insurgents to condemn each other's actions, highlighting a growing rift between al Qaeda and its allies, who follow a hard line form of violent Islam, and nationalist groups opposing the US-backed government in Baghdad.

Jihad and Reform Front is an alliance of two major Sunni insurgent groups believed to have links to the former regime of Saddam Hussein.

It was formed in May as a counterweight to the al Qaeda-led Islamic State of Iraq, blamed for many of the suicide bomb attacks that have inflicted heavy death tolls.

One of the two groups in the Jihad and Reform Front, the Islamic Army, publicly fought al Qaeda in some areas of Baghdad in early June.

REUTERS SV BST1822