Iranians helping to train Iraqi militia
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.
