KEY POINTS:
WASHINGTON - A United States general says Iraqi insurgents have used children in a suicide attack, raising worries that the insurgents have adopted a new tactic to get through security checkpoints with bombs.
Major General Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, said adults in a vehicle with two children in the backseat were allowed through a Baghdad checkpoint on Monday.
The adults then parked next to a market in the Adamiya area of the city, abandoned the vehicle and detonated it with the children still inside.
"Children in the back seat lower suspicion, we let it move through," Barbero said. "The brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn't changed."
The attack killed five, including the children, and wounded seven. The general called it a new tactic, but said US forces had only seen one such occurrence involving children.
Barbero also noted that the use of chemical bombings had increased and become a tool of the insurgency, as the three chlorine bombs detonated at the weekend brought the total to six such bombings since January.
"High-profile" suicide and car bomb attacks by Sunnis against Shiites had also not abated. But he said increased force in Iraq's capital had yielded some success, such as a reduction in murders and executions of civilians. Hundreds of families had returned to Baghdad and the number of tips from Iraqi civilians about insurgent activity hit its highest mark ever in February. Barbero's comments come as Congress considers measures that attempt to force a timeline on the Bush Administration to withdraw US troops.
Meanwhile, an opponent of the Iranian Government said yesterday that Iran had been operating training programmes for Iraqi Shiite militants at secret bases for several months as part of its efforts to destabilise Iraq.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, who accurately disclosed important details about Iran's nuclear programme in 2002, said the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had been running the camps with the full knowledge and approval of the Iranian Government.
"Over the past few months the Iranian regime has stepped up its efforts to destabilise Iraq and further escalate the violence there," Jafarzadeh said.
He provided names, dates and details of alleged training activities he said had been provided to him by Iranian opposition groups.
Militants are instructed by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force and Lebanese members of Hizbollah in unconventional warfare, explosives and shoulder-launched antiaircraft weapons.
Iran denies it is supporting sectarian groups in Iraq or promoting the anti-US insurgency.
- REUTERS
