Saddam secret service 'leading attacks on coalition'

Attacks on coalition troops in Iraq are being led by Saddam Hussein’s secret service, which spent months before the fall of Baghdad planning to resist the invaders, it was reported today.

Members of the Saddam regime’s Special Operations and Anti-terrorism Branch, known as M-14, are motivating and leading groups opposed to coalition forces, according to a Pentagon report obtained by a newspaper.

One of the suicide bombings against American forces was carried out by a pregnant woman who was an M-14 colonel, the report said.

The report contradicts claims by London and Washington that Iraqi fighters are little more than rag-tag groups of fanatics and extremists.

President George Bush has frequently referred to insurgents as “thugs and assassins” and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on his recent trip to Washington, called many “terrorists and religious fanatics”.

The report states that the more sophisticated attacks, like those experienced by US troops in Fallujah, are the work of M-14.

The report says that under Saddam, M-14 was responsible for “hijackings, assassinations and explosives” and that its officers are responsible for “the majority of attacks” today.

Repeated roadside explosions and suicide bombings, both of which are responsible for scores of coalition deaths, are also believed to be largely the work of the M-14.

M-14 is supported by members of the well-trained Fedayeen militia, which initially opposed the invading coalition.

The insurgency plan was tagged “The Challenge Project” and swung into action once the invasion began, according to the report.

“They carefully laid plans to occupy the occupiers,” a US government official told the New York Times, which obtained the report.

“They were prepared to try and hijack the country. The goal was to complicate the stabilisation mission, and democratisation.”

Some of the M-14 officers may be helping to perpetuate the climate of fear among Iraqis which the coalition hoped would disappear with the ousting, and later capture, of Saddam.

The findings were based on interrogations with high-ranking M-14 members who have been detained by coalition forces.

The seven-page “special analysis” was written by the Joint Intelligence Task Force under Defence Intelligence Agency guidance.

Documents discovered and translated by the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, which is searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, have bolstered the evidence.

M-14 officers, the report said, were sent “to key cities to assist local authorities in defending those cities and to carry out attacks”.

The study concludes that in Fallujah, the scene of vicious urban conflict and US air attacks in recent days, there are an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 hard-core insurgents.

Among them are members of the elite Iraqi Special Republican Guard who appeared to “vanish” when Iraq was invaded last year.

Earlier today it was announced that US Marines would end the siege of Fallujah on Friday, pulling back to allow a newly created, all-Iraqi security force to move into the city under a new agreement.

The new force, known as the Fallujah Protective Army, will be made up of up to 1,100 Iraqi soldiers led by one of Saddam’s generals, said US Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon report describes how the pregnant M-14 Colonel killed three American special forces personnel in April last year.

It tells how she approached the soldiers at a checkpoint near the captured Haditha Dam and stepped out of a civilian vehicle screaming.

When the soldiers approached, the pregnant woman and the vehicle detonated.