Iranians helping to train Iraqi militia

IRANIAN intelligence operatives have been training Iraqi fighters inside Iran on how to use and assemble deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the US military spokesman said yesterday.

Commanders of a splinter group inside the Shi’ite Mahdi Army militia have said there are as many as 4,000 members of their organisation that were trained in Iran and that they have stockpiles of EFPs, a weapon that causes great uneasiness among US forces because they penetrate heavily armoured vehicles.

US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell would not say how many militia fighters had been trained in Iran but said questioning fighters captured as recently as this month confirmed many had been in Iranian training camps. “We know that they are being manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs,” Caldwell said at a weekly briefing.

EFP stands for explosively formed penetrator, deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size lump of molten copper capable of piercing armour.

In January, US officials said at least 170 US soldiers had been killed by EFPs.

Caldwell also said he had evidence that Iranian intelligence agents were active in Iraq in funding, training and arming Shi’ite militia.

“The do receive training on how to assemble and employ EFPs,” Caldwell said, adding that fighters were also trained in how to carry out complex attacks that used explosives followed by assaults with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.

“There has been training on specialised weapons that are used here in Iraq. And we know they receive training on general tactics in terms of how to take and employ and work what, we call, a more complex kind of attack where we see multiple types of engagements being used,” he said.

The general would not say specifically which arm of the Iranian government was doing the training but called the trainers ‘surrogates’ of Iran’s intelligence agency.

Also yesterday, Iraqi cabinet ministers allied to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr threatened to quit the government to protest the prime minister’s lack of support for a timetable for US withdrawal.

Such a pullout by the very bloc that put Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in office could collapse his already perilously weak government. The threat comes two months into a US effort to pacify Baghdad in order to give al-Maliki’s government room to function.

Meanwhile, bodies lay scattered across two central Baghdad neighbourhoods after a raging battle left 20 suspected insurgents and four Iraqi soldiers dead, and 16 US soldiers wounded, witnesses and officials said.

The fighting in Fadhil and Sheik Omar was the most intense since a massive push to pacify the capital began two months ago.