Jan 20, 2008 9:00 am US/Eastern
Suicide Bombing Kills 6 In Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) ―
The U.S.
military said Sunday that attacks in Iraq
with Iranian-made bombs have fallen off in recent days after a sharp but brief
increase earlier in the month, and that the overall flow of weaponry from Iran has
dropped.
Meanwhile, a suicide bombing killed six people in western Iraq, the second such strike in as many days in
Anbar province, where U.S.-backed Sunni tribes were said to have routed al Qaeda
in Iraq
last year. The attack near the city of Fallujah
missed its target: a local tribal leader who is organizing resistance to the
terror group.
The Iranian armor-piercing bombs are a threat on a very different front for the
Americans, Shiite militias. The bombs, known as explosively formed penetrators,
or EFPs, have killed hundreds of American soldiers.
U.S. military officials have
been saying for months that Iran,
Iraq's Shiite neighbor to
the east, has been supplying EFPs to Shiite militias in Iraq, despite strong denials by Tehran.
"The number of signature weapons that had come from Iran and had
been used against coalition and Iraqi forces are down dramatically except for
this short uptick in the EFPs in the early part of January," military
spokesman Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told a news conference.
His remarks came a week after the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David
Petraeus, said EFP attacks had risen by a factor of two or three recently.
"It's uncertain again what is happening in Iran that's leading to that
occurrence," Smith said. He added, however, that "we don't think that
the level of training has been reduced at all. We don't believe that the level
of financing has been reduced."
Smith said the U.S. is
trying to understand the various ways in which Iran
exerts influence inside Iraq,
including training of and financial support to militias as well as the
smuggling of weapons.
"All these are very critical questions that we need to understand
ourselves," he said.
Smith's comments underscored the difficulties for the United States in determining the extent to which
Iran's ruling clergy is
influencing events in Iraq.
The U.S.
military has never made clear whether it believes the top Iranian leadership
was behind the supply of the deadly EFPs. Most of Iraq's
top Shiite politicians had lived in Iran
for years and continue to maintain close ties with Tehran.
In Sunday's bombing in Anbar province, meanwhile, the bomber detonated
explosives in his belt after four guards stopped him at the checkpoint leading
to the sheik's farm near Fallujah. The attack killed the four guards and two
civilians and injured four people, according to a police official who spoke on
condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals.
The sheik, Aeifan al-Issawi, is a leading member of the Anbar Awakening
Council.
The attack came one day after three suicide bombers targeted a police station
in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar and a former Sunni insurgent stronghold. Guards
killed one attacker, but two others detonated their explosives at the entrance,
killing at least five officers, authorities said.
The U.S.
military has credited the emergence of the councils, mostly Sunni citizens'
groups that have turned against the terror network, with playing a major part
in the decline in violence nationwide over the past six months. Such groups,
backed by the Americans, have also managed to expel al Qaeda from much of
Anbar, a largely desert province in western Iraq.
Smith said al Qaeda fighters remain in the eastern section of Anbar.
He said the militants are also concentrated northeast of Baghdad
in Diyala province, in western areas of Kirkuk
province, in the northern city of Mosul and
"in small numbers to the south of Baghdad."
Mosul was the
only major urban center in which he said al Qaeda remains a force.
"Mosul will continue to be a center of influence for, a center of gravity
for al Qaeda because of its key network of facilitation — both financing and
foreign fighters," Smith said. "The flow to Mosul
is critical for al Qaeda in Iraq."
Nevertheless, the organization's "leadership and much of its rank and file
are on the run," he said.
"As they push forward out of the major cities," he said, "a
greatest handicap to al Qaeda is beginning to lose its main influence in
population centers. Its major source of funding dries up, because it no longer
can intimidate and extort funds from businesses. Kidnappings and extortion
become less profitable, because you are in more rural areas."
In that sense, "al Qaeda in Iraq is having a very difficult
time financing and maintaining its operational base," he said. "And
if they are on the run, they are less likely to be doing planning against
civilian targets."
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