US forces occupation have captured a man who may help unravel an elite, highly-skilled insurgent group whose rocket-propelled bombs have emerged as the biggest threat to US troops, the top commander of US occupation forces in Baghdad said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, called the weapon "the greatest threat right now that we face," and he likened the shadowy group behind it to the American military's elite Delta Force.
The weapon is particularly worrying because it is designed to cause catastrophic damage and cannot be stopped once it has been launched, Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, said in an interview in his office at this US military headquarters compound just west of the capital.
It's not clear whether this small group is related to efforts by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to revitalize his Mahdi Army, which had held sway in the Sadr City section of Baghdad until U.S. and Iraqi forces wrested control after seven weeks of fighting that ended in May.
Arguing against a link to such an al-Sadr initiative is the fact that the group that Hammond described has been operating since at least late 2007, although it has become more active in recent months.
The 107 mm rockets that are used in the improvised bombs - which some call an airborne version of the roadside bombs that through the course of the war have been the leading killer of U.S. troops - are manufactured in Iran, officials said. But some officers cautioned against assuming Iran is directly involved.
The weapons are launched from small trucks and are fired in multiples of four to nine rockets at a time. The detonation is sometimes triggered by a signal from a cell phone, other times by a washing machine timer.
Hammond said the perpetrators are so skilled that he has likened their organization to the US military's secretive and elite Delta Force. He said they have demonstrated an unusual degree of military skill and cunning.
"They don't leave a forensic trail, and that just means we're going to have to work a little bit longer" to eliminate them, he said. "Of everything we've had to deal with here, this is a tough one. They're sort of the Delta Force of this enemy we face out there. They are very good" at covering their tracks, picking out targets and preserving secrecy about their membership and movements.
Source: Agencies
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