Region | Iraq
More Iran-made arms found in Iraq
The US military showed what it said was further evidence of Iranian-made weapons being used by Iraqi militants fighting American troops, including components to build sophisticated roadside bombs.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:00 February 26, 2007
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Baghdad: The US military showed what it said was further evidence of Iranian-made weapons being used by Iraqi militants fighting American troops, including components to build sophisticated roadside bombs.
The weapons, which also included mortar bombs and rockets, were found during a raid by US forces and Iraqi police on Saturday near the volatile city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.
Washington, which accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq, is particularly concerned about so-called "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs), a sophisticated Iranian-made roadside bomb the US military says has killed 170 US soldiers in Iraq since 2004. Tehran denies it fuels violence in Iraq.
There were enough metal disks to make 130 EFPs, the military said.
Military officials who displayed some of the weapons for reporters at a US base in Baghdad on Monday said the weaponry was clearly made in Iran. They said there was no way to know if the Iranian government was involved in supplying the weapons.
US officials said this month the Quds Force, a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was supplying weapons to Shiite militia groups in Iraq.
"I don't think there is any way for us to know if it is tied to any government," Major Jeremy Siegrist said of the cache.
Siegrist declined to link the weapons to any particular militant group in Iraq. He said they were found near a village where gunmen of the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr are strong.
"We know there are JAM members in the village," he said, using the English language acronym of the group.
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