The recent arrest of Qais Khazali, a former aide to Muqtada al-Sadr, and of his brother Laith Khazali, and several of their associates has yielded proof of their involvement in an attack on a government installation in Karbala in January, ABC news reports.
"Senior US military sources" have said that hard evidence was recovered from the site of the Khazalis' arrests, including ID cards of some of the killed US soldiers, according to the news agency.
US officials also say that Coalition forces found evidence linking the men to Iran, and to a weapons smuggling operation that included the transport of armor-piercing EFPs into Iraq.
The January attack in Karbala was noteworthy for its brazenness, as assailants disguised as US soldiers siezed and later killed five US soldiers.
The Khazalis' alleged links both to Iran on the one hand, and to the Karbala raids on the other, will heighten earlier speculation that there was an Iranian connection to the January attack, as its timing came shortly after the US siezed Iranian officials in Irbil in December. ABC's report suggests that perhaps the original plan was to capture five US soldiers to offer in exchange for the six Iranian officials, a plan which would have been botched by the pursuit of Iraqi security forces and the execution of the five captive US soldiers.
The US has also highlighted the recent arrest in Mosul of a "Saddam Fedayeen leader involved in setting up training camps in Syria for Iraqi and foreign fighters," ABC reports.
The US has repeatedly alleged that Syria was not acting aggressively to thwart the infiltration of foreign fighters into Iraq. However, the Mosul arrest is the first official allegation that training camps for fighters are operating on Syrian soil.
No other details are available at this time about the Mosul arrest.
The Syrian regime has repeatedly denied any connection, active or passive, to the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Thirdly, the US military also announced the arrest of leaders and mmbers of a car bombing network in the Rusafa area of Baghdad, saying that those arrested had been responsible for "some of the horrific bombings in eastern Baghdad in recent weeks," according to ABC's report.
