Senior Iraqi officials allege that 9 of 10 suicide bombers operating in Iraq are trained in Syria.
Iraq Says Syria Harbors Foreign Killers (WaPo, A15)
Top Iraqi defense officials on Sunday accused Syria of allowing foreign fighters to operate training camps on Syrian soil and sneak into Iraq to commit suicide bombings. “We do not have the least doubt that nine out of 10 of the suicide bombers who carry out suicide bombing operations among Iraqi citizens . . . are Arabs who have crossed the border with Syria,” the Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie, told journalists in Cairo, the Reuters news service reported. “Most of those who blow themselves up in Iraq are Saudi nationals,” he added.
Iraqi Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi also criticized Syria. “We have more than 450 detainees who came from different Arab and Muslim countries to train in Syria and enter with their booby-trapped vehicles into Iraq to bring destruction and killings,” Dulaimi said after meeting with Jordanian Prime Minister Adnan Badran in Amman, according to the Associated Press. “Let me tell the Syrians that if the Iraqi volcano explodes, no neighboring capital will be saved,” Dulaimi said, warning that the aim of terrorists was “to kill tolerance and destroy coexistence in Arab and Muslim cities.”
The charges came as Jordan blamed Iraqi suicide bombers for three blasts at hotels in Amman on Wednesday that killed 57 people. The allegations also echo complaints from U.S. military officials that Syria has done little to patrol its 376-mile border with Iraq.
The 9 of 10 number is quite probably an exageration. Regardless, Syria is quite likely the prime base camp for terrorists now that Afghanistan is inhospitable–with Iraq as the major proving ground.
