The operation came in a raid, and it was one in a series aimed at stopping the flow of a type of powerful roadside bomb known as explosively formed projectiles, or E.F.P.s, into Iraq, said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force Iraq. Sixteen people were detained in the raid in the Eastern Baghdad district of Sadr City.
“We’re dismantling the networks link by link and one link leads us to another,” Lt. Col. Garver said. He acknowledged, however, that there was a steady stream of insurgents able to smuggle and place the bombs.
The military’s hope is to arrest the most experienced of the smugglers and assemblers and in doing so, reduce the number of successful attacks, he said.
“It’s important to get key guys,” he said. “These guys have demonstrated success. We continue to chisel away at the organization, chisel at the guys with the most knowledge, the most contacts and we continue to whittle that down.”
Earlier today, Iraqi police were attacked by a powerful roadside bomb that killed five policemen and injured two others.
There was more violence. The bodies of eight executed men, three in Baghdad, three in Diyala and two in Kirkuk were found in different locations throughout Iraq. A day earlier in Kirkuk, a car bomb exploded outside the home of a policeman, killing three people and injuring 36 others, according the American military. Also in Kirkuk on Thursday a bomb targeted a local council member killing him and someone with him, said Capt. Shakhwan Abdullah of Kirkuk police.
In April, the military counted 69 attacks with the E.F.P. bombs, the most it has seen in any month so far. However, a military spokesman noted that they do not know when the bombs, which are imported in parts, were smuggled into the country and assembled. Similarly, although the Americans say they are certain that most parts originate in Iran, they have no intelligence linking the Iranian government to the bombs export into Iraq.
“We have not found a chain that leads all the way up to the Iranian government,” Lt. Col Garver said.
“We were never trying to indict a specific member of the government, but we know that the Quds Force was involved in this,” he said.
The Quds force is a division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The military has said it has intelligence that shows the people assembling and placing the bombs have been trained in Iran. However, the the Iranian government has denied that it has sponsored or encouraged the training of Iraqis in armed attacks or that it has provided weapons to them.
These bombs are of particular concern to the American military because when properly assembled and placed, they hurl a copper disk at high speeds that can penetrate even the heavy armor of a tank. There are few other types of roadside bombs that have been as consistently lethal for American troops.
Most of the attacks using E.F.P.s have been in the eastern areas of the city which is predominantly Shiite.
Iran, where the vast majority of citizens are Shiites, has been open to working closely with both anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. The latter group, at one time, had a militia that was trained by the Iranian revolutionary guard. However, that militia is now believed to have been largely integrated into the Iraqi security forces, and SCIRI is part of Iraq’s governing coalition.
“For every E.F.P. that goes off, it’s hard to tell when they came into the country,” Lt. Col. Garver said “Did it come in during 2006 or 2007 When did each component start moving from Iran versus when did they actually get assembled. They have a long way to come.”
The military announced Friday that four American soldiers had been killed in three separate attacks in Iraq on Thursday. Two died in an attack in western Iraq and two died in separate attacks in Baghdad. One was killed in Eastern Baghdad when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb; six soldiers were wounded in the same incident. The second died in western Baghdad, also from a roadside bomb. An Iraqi interpreter was killed and three soldiers were wounded.