Thursday, July 26, 2007

Odierno: Iran training insurgents for green zone mortar attacks

Above: The 'Green Zone' is an area of of Baghdad streets and blocks barricaded against intrusion. The area was originally home to the villas of government officials, several government ministries, and a number of palaces of Saddam Hussein. Today it contains the headquarters for all American operations, as well as Iraqi ministerial offices and the parliament. A number of top Iraqi government officials live there as well.

The U.S. military has noted a “significant improvement” in the aim of attackers firing rockets and mortars into the heavily fortified Green Zone in the past three months that it has linked to training in Iran, a top commander said Thursday...

Odierno said networks continue to smuggle powerful roadside bombs and mortars across the border from Iran despite Tehran’s assertions that it supports stability in Iraq...

“One of the reasons why we’re sitting down with the Iranian government ... is trying to solve some of these problems,” Odierno said at a news conference in the Green Zone, which is home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government headquarters. “We have seen in the last three months a significant improvement in the capability of mortarmen and rocketeers to provide accurate fires into the Green Zone and other places and we think this is directly related to training that is conducted in Iran. So we continue to go after these networks with the Iraqi security forces.”

Read the rest at Army Times

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