Foreigners 'behind most Iraq suicide attacks'

The vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be foreigners - mostly Saudis and other Gulf Arabs – and the trend has become more pronounced this year with North Africans also streaming in to carry out deadly missions, US and Iraqi officials say.

The bombers are recruited from Sunni communities, smuggled into Iraq from Syria after receiving religious indoctrination, and then quickly bundled into cars or strapped with explosive vests and sent to their deaths, the officials told The Associated Press.

The young men are not so much fighters as human bombs – a relatively small, but deadly component of the Iraqi uprising.

“The foreign fighters are the ones that most often are behind the wheel of suicide car bombs, or most often behind any suicide situation,” said US Air Force Brig Gen Don Alston, spokesman for the Multinational Force in Iraq.

Officials have long believed that non-Iraqis infiltrating the country through its porous borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia were behind most suicide missions, and the wave of bloody strikes in recent months has confirmed that thinking.

Authorities have found little evidence that Iraqis have been behind the near-daily stream of suicide attacks over the past six months, US and Iraqi intelligence officials said.

Since 2003, less than 10% of more than 500 suicide attacks have been carried out by Iraqis, according to one defence official. So far this year, there have been at least 213 suicide attacks – 172 by vehicle and 41 by bombers on foot - according to an AP count.

Another US official said American authorities believed Iraqis were beginning to look at suicide bombers as a liability. “Just as there is no shortage of people willing to do this, nor is there any shortage of targets, and they tend to be police,” the official said.

“I still think 80% of the insurgency, the day to day activity, is Iraqi – the roadside bombings, mortars, direct weapons fire, rifle fire, automatic weapons fire,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert with the Congressional Research Service, which advises US politicians.

But he added: “The foreign fighters attract the headlines with the suicide bombings, no question.”

The key role of foreign fighters in suicide attacks is one reason many senior military officials, including the top US general in the Middle East, tend to view the war in Iraq as slowly developing into an international struggle against militant Islam.

The military brass say Islamic extremists like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al Qaida In Iraq organisation are determined to start a civil war in Iraq by attacking Iraqi security forces and members of the country’s Shiite majority.

“It’s not about one man. It’s about his network,” the top general in the region, US Gen John Abizaid, said recently. “His network exists inside Iraq. It’s connected to al Qaida. It’s got facilitation nodes in Syria. It brings foreign fighters in from Saudi Arabia and from North Africa.”

In all, there have been more than 484 car bombings since the US handed sovereignty to Iraq one year ago, and the pace of attacks has escalated since prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari’s government took over two months ago after January’s historic elections.

Those attacks alone, mostly car bombs and suicide attacks, have killed more than 1,370 people since April 28 – and more than 2,170 since June of last year, according to an AP count.