تقرير مهم ومفصل لوكال الأسوسيتد بريس للارا جاكس وقاسم عبدالزهراء،شارك في اعداده ريبيكا سانتانا من بغداد وسمير يعقوب من عمان في الاردن فيه تفاصيل زعموا انها لاعداد فصائل المقاومة الثلاث وأمور أخرى

Shiite militias step up Iraq attacks on US troops

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press – 16 hours ago

BAGHDAD (AP) — Shiite militias backed by Iran have ramped up attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, making June the deadliest month in two years for American forces. The militiamen's goal is to prevent the U.S. military from extending its presence in the country past the end of this year.
Three separate militias have been involved in the attacks, particularly a small but deadly group known as the Hezbollah Brigades, believed to be funded and trained by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and its special operations wing, the Quds Force.
The militia attacks — mainly in the Shiite heartland in southern Iraq — raise the prospect of increased violence against Americans if a residual U.S. force remains in the country past 2011, a possibility being considered by the Baghdad government to help maintain a still fragile security.
They also point to the persistent efforts by Shiite-majority Iran, the United States' top regional rival, to influence Iraq after the Americans' exit.
In a statement targeted at the militias, Iraqi parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi called Thursday on all groups to support the government in Baghdad if it ultimately decides to ask U.S. troops to stay.
In the latest American deaths, a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said Thursday that three U.S. troops were killed a day earlier when a huge rocket known as an IRAM struck a remote desert base just a few miles (kilometers) from the Iranian border in Iraq's southern Wasit province.
The deaths brought the monthly U.S. military toll to 15, nearly all of them of them from attacks suspected to have been planned by planned by Shiite militias. That's the highest number of military deaths in Iraq since June 2009, and the most combat-related deaths since June 2008. Since March 2003, 4,469 American troops have died in Iraq.
The IRAMs are a hallmark of Hezbollah Brigades, or Kataib Hezbollah, a militia that U.S. Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the military's top spokesman in Iraq, said is almost exclusively reliant on Iran.
The Hezbollah Brigades, which has links to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, is solely focused on attacking U.S. troops and other American personnel and claimed responsibility for a June 6 rocket attack that killed five soldiers in Baghdad.
The force, estimated at about 1,000 fighters, receives unlimited funding from Iran, an Iraqi lawmaker familiar with militia operations said. Its militants are paid between $300 to $500 each month, said a senior Iraqi intelligence official. He described the militia as the most difficult for counterterror forces to penetrate because, like al-Qaida, operatives are segregated into cells that strictly kept apart.
The lawmaker and Iraqi official, along with several U.S. officials, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
The new spate of attacks on U.S. troops began in mid-March, after the Obama administration started hinting it would prefer to see some American troops remain in Iraq into 2012 to help preserve the nation's shaky security and stave off Iranian influence. About 46,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, and those are supposed to leave by Dec. 31 under the terms of a 2008 security agreement between Washington and Baghdad.
Also involved in anti-U.S. attacks is the Promised Day Brigade, linked to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
Al-Sadr holds considerable sway in Iraq's government, and U.S. officials believe the Promised Day Brigade — which is five times the size of the Hezbollah Brigades — poses more of a threat to Iraq's long-term stability than the other militias. Al-Sadr's political party holds 39 seats in parliament, and it was with his support that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was able to keep his job for a second term after 2010 elections.
Al-Sadr disarmed his Mahdi Army after it was roundly defeated by U.S. and Iraqi forces in fierce 2008 battles in the southern port city of Basra. But he created the Promised Day Brigade to keep a militia on hand to "resist the occupier," a U.S. military intelligence official said.
The force gets hundreds of millions of dollars in financial assistance, including from Iran, a large number of sympathizers in Turkey and donations from around the Muslim world, a senior Mahdi Army commander said. It is also funded by the Sadrist political organization, to which every party lawmaker and minister donates about $5,000 a month.
Iran contributes far less to the Promised Day Brigade than it does to other militias, in part because al-Sadr has avoided allowing Tehran to wield as much control over the force, said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the force's inner workings.
Though he lived in Iran for the last several years, officials and analysts say al-Sadr wants to keep Tehran at arm's length for political reasons amid the Iraqi public's strong nationalist feeling. Still, Iranian money and weapons continue to flow to al-Sadr because of their shared animosity against the U.S.
The third Shiite militia targeting Americans in Iraq is Asaib Ahl al-Haq, or Band of the People of Righteousness, a splinter Sadrist group that now competes with the Promised Day Brigade for support.
It does not have al-Sadr's backing, and an Iraqi close to the extremist group said it relies on Iran for support, including around $5 million in cash and weapons each month. Officials believe there are fewer than 1,000 Asaib Ahl al-Haq militiamen, and their leaders live in Iran.
The Iraqi intelligence official estimated about 3,000 Shiite militiamen — two-thirds of them Mahdi Army — were jailed by U.S. forces during the height of the war but later released by Iraq's government because of a lack of evidence to hold them. Most of them have made their way back to the front lines, the official said, more fueled by anger at American troops than ever.
Former Marine Ashwin Madia, who served in Iraq in 2005-06 and is interim chairman of VoteVets.org, a veterans advocacy group that has been critical of the Iraq war, said the deadly month should convince President Barack Obama to pull U.S. troops out by the end of the year as promised.
"If we stay in Iraq past our deadline, there is no reason to believe that violent attacks won't further increase, leading to more American deaths," Madia said Thursday.
Buchanan, the U.S. military spokesman, said the attacks are "not going to have an impact on us leaving or staying" because that decision will mostly be up to Iraq's government.
But he raised the specter of Iran using the militias to keep Iraq unstable so it can extert more influence once U.S. troops leave.
"Their overall preference is a weak Iraq," he said.


Associated Press Writers Rebecca Santana in Baghdad and Sameer N. Yacoub in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...0536dfaa60fd65
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43598044
http://www.timesonline.com/news/worl...9a8198260.html
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...US-troops.html

التقرير الاول للارا جاكس في 30/6/2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...orH_story.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/06/30...illed-in-iraq/
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/0...s-iraq-063011/

تقرير في الواشنطن بوست لتيم كريغ وإد أوكيفي فيه تفاصيل متنوعة ومعلومات عديدة منها أن الهجوم الذي قتل فيه 3 جنود جرح ما ما يزيد عن دزينة من الجنود الأمريكيين
By Tim Craig and Ed O’Keefe, Published: June 30
BAGHDAD — Three U.S. soldiers were killed this week in a rocket attack at a U.S. base near the Iranian border, the military said Thursday, bringing June’s death toll to 15 and marking the bloodiest month for U.S. troops in Iraq in two years.

U.S. military commanders have said in recent months that they feared such an increase in violence would accompany the planned withdrawal of most American troops by the end of the year. Military officials in Baghdad and at the Pentagon blamed the mounting death toll on the growing sophistication of weapons that insurgents and Iranian-backed militia groups are using, including powerful rockets, armor-piercing grenades and jam-resistant roadside bombs suspected of coming from Iran.
The heightened danger underscores the volatile security situation in Iraq, amid ongoing debate here and in Washington about whether any U.S. troops should remain in the country.

June’s death toll was the highest since 15 troops died here in June 2009, according to iCasualties.org, a ********* site that tracks U.S. military deaths. Fourteen of the deaths were combat-related, the highest since 23 soldiers and Marines were killed in action in June 2008, the site said.

During much of the insurgency that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, U.S. military commanders blamed Sunni-dominated terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq for many of the attacks against American troops. But as the U.S. military has adjusted its tactics, largely withdrawing from cities and improving its technological capacity to combat deadly roadside bombs and suicide attacks, officials say it has become far harder for loosely organized Sunni militias to strike out against the roughly 46,000 U.S. troops in the country.

Now, according to Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, the primary threat to the Americans comes from three Shiite militia groups operating in Iraq, which officials said they believe are being trained and equipped by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps special forces.

“All of them receive at least indirect support from elements in Iran,” Buchanan said in an interview this week.

In early June, what U.S. officials believe was a sophisticated rocket slammed into a joint Iraqi-U.S. military base in eastern Baghdad, killing six American soldiers in the deadliest single attack on forces here in more than two years. In addition, three U.S. troops were killed by roadside bombs in June.

Last week, an American contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development was killed when suspected Shiite militants attached a bomb to a car he was riding in near a Baghdad university. And Sunday, two U.S. troops were killed when an apparent armor-piercing grenade was lobbed at their vehicle.

Although the U.S. military did not release specifics on Wednesday’s attack pending notification of next of kin, officials familiar with the incident said the rocket was so powerful that it also wounded more than a dozen soldiers, several critically.

There was no immediate assertion of responsibility for that attack. However, Kataib Hezbollah, one of the Shiite militia groups mentioned by Buchanan, said earlier last month that it was responsible for the attack that killed six soldiers.

Buchanan said there is “no doubt” that Kataib Hezbollah “follows orders” from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force, a highly specialized unit responsible for operations outside Iran. “Their leadership lives in Iran, they are directly trained by the Quds Force and they are supplied by them,” Buchanan said.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, outgoing Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates expressed similar frustration with Iran’s ties to the Shiite militias operating in Iraq. Iran is “facilitating weapons, they’re facilitating training, there’s new technology that they are providing,” Gates said. “They’re stepping this up, and it’s a concern.”

Buchanan said efforts to protect U.S. forces in Iraq are further complicated by rival Shiite militias that are vying to emerge as the dominant Shiite insurgency group in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...prH_story.html
http://www.twincities.com/national/c...nclick_check=1
http://www.journalgazette.net/articl...9977/1006/NEWS




بعد مقتل 3 الجيش الأميركي:«اعنف» شهر منذ 3 أعوام في العراق على يد الكتاب والعصائب واللواء ومصادرة أسلحة لعصائب أهل الحق

بوكانن: الميليشيات المدعومة من إيران تصعد العنف ضد القوات الأميركية


اريخ النشر: الجمعة 01 يوليو 2011
وكالات

قال المتحدث باسم القوات الأميركية الميجور جنرال جيفري بوكانن أمس غداة مقتل ثلاثة جنود أميركيين جنوب العراق، “إن المجاميع الشيعية المدعومة من إيران باتت تصعد أعمال العنف ضد قواتنا وضد أهداف أخرى، مستخدمة أسلحة إيرانية”. فيما قتل ثلاثة عراقيين وأصيب خمسة آخرون باعتداءات في بغداد والتأميم.

وأعلن الجيش الأميركي في العراق أمس مقتل ثلاثة من جنوده جنوب العراق ليرتفع عدد قتلاه خلال شهر يونيو الحالي إلى 15 جنديا. كما تعرضت قاعدة للقوات الأميركية شمال بعقوبة بمحافظة ديالى للقصف بثلاث قذائف هاون، ولم يعرف حجم الخسائر البشرية أو المادية.

وقال الجنرال جيفري بوكانن “إن المجاميع الشيعية المدعومة من إيران باتت تصعد أعمال العنف ضد قواتنا وضد أهداف أخرى”. وأضاف “شهدنا تصاعد هذه الهجمات في جميع أنحاء العراق، لكنها تركزت في بغداد والمحافظات الجنوبية وتنفذها ثلاثة مجاميع هي كتائب حزب الله وعصائب أهل الحق ولواء اليوم الموعود، وهي جميعها مدعومة من قبل إيران”.

وقال بوكانن إن المجموعات المتمردة الشيعية مرتبطة بفيلق القدس الإيراني والحرس الثوري الإيراني التي فرضت واشنطن عقوبات على قادته. وكشف أن الأسلحة المستخدمة في الهجمات ضد القوات الأميركية مصنعة في إيران.
وأوضح أنه تم خلال الأسابيع القليلة الماضية اكتشاف العديد من مخابئ الأسلحة في بغداد، أحدها قبل أسبوعين في الشعب شمال شرق بغداد، واكتشفته الفرقة 11 للجيش العراقي. وأضاف أن الأسلحة المخبأة “تضم صواريخ عيار 107 ملم، و49 عبوة ناسفة خارقة للدروع، وعبوات تلتصق بالسيارات وتودي بحياة الأبرياء بصورة يومية”.

وتابع بينما يحمل صاروخا كتب عليه صنع في إيران “تم التأكد أن الأسلحة بهذا المخبأ تعود لعصائب أهل الحق”. وقال بوكانن إن القوات الأمنية العراقية اكتشفت خلال الستة أشهر الماضية 25 مخبأ للسلاح أسبوعيا “بعضها صغير للغاية وبعضها الآخر ضخم جدا ويضم مئات القذائف والصواريخ”.

وأضاف أن “كبار قادة فيلق القدس يأتون للعراق عدة مرات، وكثيرا ما يكون لديهم حصانة دبلوماسية بالطبع”. ويرتبط لواء اليوم الموعود بشكل مباشر بمقتدى الصدر، فيما انبثقت المجموعتان الأخريان عن جيش المهدي التابع له.
http://www.alittihad.ae/details.php?id=62548&y=2011
http://www.moheet.com/show_news.aspx?nid=480093&pg=31
http://international.daralhayat.com/...article/283510