Brigadier General Anderson: Most IEDs are from Saddam’s regime

Coalition forces in Iraq continue to encounter explosive devices made in Iran, although the bulk of such ordnance is left over from the former Iraqi regime, a senior military official told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday.

“There are clearly still remnants of war from Saddam’s days all over this country,” said Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson, chief of staff for Multi-National Force-Iraq, who spoke from Camp Liberty in Baghdad via a satellite video hookup. “The difference is, now, we’re finding the same types of munitions and weaponry that is clearly marked from Iran.”

Anderson said those items take the form of components of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, that are brought into and assembled in Iraq. But “the bulk” of what troops are finding is old ordnance, some of it dating back to the 1991 Gulf War, he said.

Senior U.S. officials have recently said an Iranian paramilitary group is supplying bomb-making material to Iraqi Shiite militants for use on U.S. troops. Anderson said MNFI currently has detained “a minimal” number of Iranians and is questioning them at various sites in Iraq.

“And we’ll keep trying to determine, through questioning, what their motives are, who they’re working for, how they’re resourced and what their ultimate goal is here in Iraq,” Anderson said. He didn’t provide any new insights into whether the answers had provided any new such information.

Read the rest at the Navy Times

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