SAMARRA, Iraq (AFP) - A suspected Al-Qaeda hideout has been uncovered on an island on the Tigris river in central Iraq, by a group of Sunni Arabs fighting the Islamist militants, their leader said on Saturday. The hideout, from where Al-Qaeda's operations in the provinces of Salaheddin, Anbar and Diyala are believed to have been coordinated, was found on an island in the Tigris near the city of Samarra, 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad.
Majin Younis Hassan, leader of the local anti-Qaeda group, said the hideout was discovered early on Saturday following an "intelligence tip".
"We found 1,500 heavy, medium and light weapons as well as several bombs," Hassan told AFP.
He said the underground hideout had four big rooms, each with eight beds.
"We found documents which were messages between the base and other Al-Qaeda branches. One document had the names of Al-Qaeda members, another was a message from the group's chief (Abu Ayyub al-Masri) to other members," Hassan said.
He said other documents involved exchanges of messages regarding "funding, the suspension of some fighters and new deployments in Samarra".
Since September 2006, the US military has been bankrolling anti-Qaeda groups across Iraq recruited mainly among Sunni Arab tribes and former insurgents.
US commanders say there are now around 130 such groups totalling some 80,000 volunteers, 80 percent of them Sunni and the remainder Shiite.