30 April 2006

Iraqis using 'new Hizbollah bombs' to kill British troops

A multi-charged roadside bomb, developed by Hizbollah in Lebanon, is being used against British and American soldiers by Iraqi insurgents linked to Iran, according to military intelligence sources.

The device consists of an array of up to five armour-piercing "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges. They are fired at different angles at coalition vehicles, resulting in almost certain death for at least some of the soldiers inside.

The bombs are easier for insurgents to use because, unlike single EFP devices, they do not need to be carefully aimed and so can be planted beside a road within a few seconds. Their killing potential is also enhanced because more than one EFP is likely to hit a single vehicle.

Some have been painted to look like concrete blocks - a modification of a tactic used by Iranian-backed Hizbollah, which hollowed out imitation rocks, bought in Beirut garden centres, to conceal bombs targeting Israeli vehicles.

A senior defence source said: "There are clear signs of Iran's sinister hand, and through that, Hizbollah, in this development."

A Pentagon document obtained by The Sunday Telegraph describes the devices as "well manufactured by experienced bomb makers" and "pioneered by Lebanese Hizbollah". It adds: "The United Kingdom has accused Iran of providing these devices to insurgents in Iraq."

Triggered when an infra-red beam is broken, the projectiles are capable of penetrating the armour of 60-ton Abrams tanks. Warrior armoured vehicles and Land Rovers, used by British forces in southern Iraq, offer almost no protection against them.

The Sunday Telegraph was the first newspaper to report the use of infra-red triggered devices, believed to be from Iran, against British troops. Since last May, 14 British soldiers have been killed in Iraq, including 12 by roadside bombs made up of EFPs and an infra-red trigger.

The latest British soldier killed in Iraq is believed to have been a victim of an infrared bomb. Lt Richard Palmer, 27, of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, died near Basra two weeks ago after a roadside bomb exploded beside his Land Rover.

In February, John Negroponte, America's director of national intelligence, blamed the Iranian government for the spread of such weapons throughout Iraq.

He told a United States Senate committee: "Teheran is responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks in 2005, by providing Shia militants with the capability to build IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] with explosively formed projectiles, similar to those developed by Iran and Lebanese Hizbollah."

Coalition forces recently intercepted an infra-red EFP device being transported into Iraq across the Shatt al-Arab waterway from Iran. Many such devices use a simple motion sensor, made and sold legally by the Taiwan-based company Everspring.

EFP devices have a steel or copper curved dish that becomes a molten dart when the blasting cap is detonated. The Pentagon documents say that EFPs are "capable of penetrating armour plate up to 10cm thick or more at a range of 100 metres or more".

There were 10,953 roadside bombings last year, compared with 5,607 in 2004.

8 January 2006

Olmert anointed as successor to Sharon
TOBY HARNDEN AND HARRY DE QUETTEVILLE in Jerusalem

SENIOR ADVISERS to Ariel Sharon, Israel's stricken prime minister, are to launch his Ehud Olmert, his deputy, as the country's new leader and the only politician capable of leading Israel towards peace with the Palestinians.

Shimon Peres, the veteran elder statesman and former Labour prime minister who joined Mr Sharon's new centrist Kadima party, has further boosted Mr Olmert's chances by giving him his personal backing.

But Israeli government sources acknowledged that they faced a huge task in transforming the 60-year-old caretaker leader into a politician of world stature.

The prognosis for Mr Sharon, 77, who suffered a massive stroke on Wednesday night and has since undergone 15 hours surgery in three operations, remained grim and detailed discussions were taking place in Jerusalem about funeral arrangements.

A prolonged period of Mr Sharon hovering between life and death would complicate matters for Mr Olmert, the finance minister, vice premier and a former mayor of Jerusalem who founded the centrist Kadima party with Mr Sharon in November.

Mr Peres, at 83 a towering international figure and the only politician with comparable experience to Mr Sharon, is understood to have ruled out either a leadership bid or a return to the Labour party he left to join Kadima.

Throwing his weight behind the acting premier, Mr Peres has told friends that "Olmert will lead Kadima".

Mr Peres is likely to be offered a senior position in a Kadima government. Lord Janner of Braunstone, a leading figure in Britain's Jewish community, who met both Mr Peres and Mr Olmert last week said he would be "astonished" if Mr Peres, who has twice been Israeli premier, were lured back to labour.

"I believe he will be very high up in the government under Olmert and that the two of them will work extremely closely and happily together. Mr Peres will have a very substantial influence in Kadima and in the country."

While Mr Sharon's inner circle maintained a vigil at the stricken premier's bedside, the men who had re-branded him from an extremist and alleged war criminal into the politician viewed as the Middle East's best hope for peace were turning their attentions to working the same magic on Mr Olmert.

Reuven Adler, an advertising tycoon known as Mr Sharon's chief spin doctor, told the Sunday Telegraph: "When I find a quiet moment at the hospital, I'm trying to think of the hows and why's and whens of launching Olmert as a prime ministerial candidate. But it's very difficult to market Kadima without Sharon."

Mr Olmert has less than three months to prove himself a capable leader before a general election on March 28th. Although first joined the Knesset at 28 and was mayor of Jerusalem for a decade after defeating the legendary Teddy Kollek in 1993, many doubt Mr Olmert has the pedigree to step into Mr Sharon's shoes.

His lack of military experience - he was an Army journalist - and his relative lack of international experience could be Achilles heels.

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party that Mr Sharon and Mr Olmert left to start Kadima, is a former elite commando who has strong links to Republicans in Washington. Prime minister from 1996 to 1999, the hard-line Mr Netanyahu has made no secret of his desire to return to power.

Polls indicate that even without Mr Sharon his Kadima party would still win a majority of votes in March, although the share might diminish without the veteran leader, particularly if Palestinian violence was stepped up.

"So far Ehud Olmert is becoming a viable leader," Mr Adler said hesitantly. "But we will be helping him to listen and learn and grow into the genuine statesman that the world needs right now from Israel.

"It will not be overnight, in one step, that he will be embraced by the Israeli public. We will be able to achieve a winning strategy but it will be work, work, work. I don't believe in magic tricks."

Mr Olmert is likely to portray himself as the custodian of Mr Sharon's legacy.

Lior Horev, another Sharon inner circle member who was speaking from his car as he drove away from the hospital, said: "We are uniting around Ehud Olmert. We'll give him all the help he needs.

" Sharon's legacy, proposals and agenda are those of Kadima. There are no other positions. Ehud Olmert has been a partner with Sharon in forming those positions. He has tremendous qualities. He has risen to the moment. But he can't mimic Sharon - it's impossible."

Nonetheless, while Mr Sharon was formulating the "disengagement plan" to dismantle Jewish settlements in Gaza and complete the controversial West Bank separation barrier, Mr Olmert became the former general's political alter ego - floating radical policy positions to judge the public mood.

No politician understands the workings of Mr Sharon's strategy as Mr Olmert does. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph before he assumed the reins of power, Mr Olmert explained how he, had made a similar ideological journey to that of the veteran Israeli leader.

The growth of the Palestinian population, he said, meant the dream of a Greater Israel had to be abandoned.

"I want to live in a Jewish state and I want to live in a democratic state," he said. "How we can live in a Jewish state with five and a half million Palestinians that might become a majority on the basis of democracy I don't know."

He was prepared to use emotive terms, normally rejected by Israelis, words such as "occupation" and even the "transfer" of Jewish settlers. Declaring his desire to minimise the Israeli presence in the Palestinian territories, he said: "What we are doing now is really to reduce the occupation, what is considered to be occupation by outside observers, to the inevitable minimum."

As a former Jerusalem mayor, Mr Olmert could be ideally placed to negotiate the issue of the city in final status talks, which diplomats see as the most sensitive political issue between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr Sharon's surgeons stated he was due to be woken up today(Sun) and the damage to his brain assessed. Privately, diplomats and statesmen around the world were on standby to fly to Israel for his funeral.

Mr Sharon's beloved wife Lily is buried in Sderot, within Kassam missile range of Gaza. There are fears that a funeral there, which would be attended by President George W. Bush and Mr Blair could become a security nightmare. The official ceremony is therefore likely to be held at Jerusalem's Mount Hertzl.

In the meantime, Mr Sharon's aides were hoping against hope that a funeral might not be necessary this week. "I know Sharon," said Mr Horev. "If he has anything to do with it, he will pull through."

8 January 2006

Thank God Sharon 'curse' has worked, say settlers

BY TOBY HARNDEN, Kiryat Arba

Shaking his head with sadness, Shmuel Ben-Ishai turned off his television set after the Hebrew announcement that Ariel Sharon was being taken to the operating theatre after suffering a second cerebral haemorrhage. It seemed the prayers of the father of nine had not been answered.

"It looks like he's going to die today," he said slowly. "It's the end. He's out for good and he's not coming back."

Unlike most Israelis, directed by leading rabbis to pray for the survival of the stricken prime minister, Mr Ben-Ishai had not been asking God to spare Mr Sharon so he could resume the search for peace.

"I have been praying for him to suffer," he said, rocking the cradle he made for his grandson, Yehuda.

"I want him to stay in this state and experience pain because of the pain he has caused the Israeli people. Simply dying is too easy."

Mr Ben-Ishai, 47, an orthodox Jew, is part of Israel's far Right that views Mr Sharon as a traitor for dismantling Jewish settlements in Gaza last year, thereby abandoning the dream of a Greater Israel.

He supported a curse known as a pulsa denura - Aramaic for "lashes of fire" - on Mr Sharon last July by a Jewish extremist group that called for him to be struck down. "I am very happy that the pulsa denura was successful," he said.

"This weekend, after our Sabbath morning prayers, we will have a small celebration to thank God for listening to us."

In Kiryat Arba, a settlement of 6,000 Jews perched on the edge of the Palestinian town of Hebron in the heart of the occupied West Bank, Mr Sharon's decline is not being mourned.

On Thursday night, as the former general's condition worsened, Itamar Ben-Gvir, 29, held a barbecue to celebrate. "It was a spontaneous thing," he said, as the Muslim call to prayer rang out from a mosque just outside the steel gate protecting the settlement.

"There were 20 or 30 people here. We had wine and good food to celebrate the fact that there is a supreme judge in heaven. I do not bear Sharon ill will as a person but he needed to be stopped and that is what God did."

Ironically, the sentiments of the hardline settlers were similar to those expressed by figures as diverse as Pat Robertson, the American evangelist, and Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

Mr Ben-Ishai said Mr Sharon's stroke was a "divine intervention" on a par with the assassination of the prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. "I was delighted when that happened. I name one of my son's after Yigal Amir, who shot Rabin, because I admired him so much. Like Rabin, Sharon wanted to destroy this place and hand Jewish land back to the Arabs.

He was a crook and a liar who cared only for himself. He thought he was bigger than God, but he was not."

Other settlers, however, viewed Mr Sharon's condition with regret, even if they disagreed with his decision to close the Gaza settlements, which he had helped to create after seizing the land in the Six Day War of 1967.

"I will not be praying for him to recover but I will not be praying for him to die either," said Jonathan Frank, 22, a student. "He was a fighter for Israel since the 1940s and he was prepared to use the iron fist to protect us.

"A lot of people here are delighted at his downfall. I don't like the horrible things he did with the Gaza evacuation but he did good things too. It's a mixed legacy."

1 January 2006

Sniper shot that took out an insurgent killer from three quarters of a mile
TOBY HARNDEN in Ramadi

Gazing through the telescopic sight of his M24 rifle, Staff Sgt Jim Gilliland, leader of Shadow sniper team, fixed his eye on the Iraqi insurgent who had just killed an American soldier.

His quarry stood nonchalantly in the fourth-floor bay window of a hospital in battle-torn Ramadi, still clasping a long-barrelled Kalashnikov. Instinctively allowing for wind speed and bullet drop, Shadow's commander aimed 12 feet high.

A single shot hit the Iraqi in the chest and killed him instantly. It had been fired from a range of 1,250 metres, well beyond the capacity of the powerful Leupold sight, accurate to 1,000 metres.

"I believe it is the longest confirmed kill in Iraq with a 7.62mm rifle," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, 28, who hunted squirrels in Double Springs, Alabama from the age of five before progressing to deer - and then people.

"He was visible only from the waist up. It was a one in a million shot. I could probably shoot a whole box of ammunition and never hit him again."

Later that day, Staff Sgt Gilliland found out that the dead soldier was Staff Sgt Jason Benford, 30, a good friend.

The insurgent was one of between 55 and 65 he estimates that he has shot dead in less than five months, putting him within striking distance of sniper legends such as Carlos Hathcock, who recorded 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. One of his men, Specialist Aaron Arnold, 22, of Medway, Ohio, has chalked up a similar tally.

"It was elating, but only afterwards," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, recalling the September 27 shot. "At the time, there was no high-fiving. You've got troops under fire, taking casualties and you're not thinking about anything other than finding a target and putting it down. Every shot is for the betterment of our cause."

All told, the 10-strong Shadow sniper team, attached to Task Force 2/69, has killed just under 200 in the same period and emerged as the US Army's secret weapon in Ramadi against the threat of the hidden Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or roadside bomb - the insurgency's deadliest tactic.

Above the spot from which Staff Sgt Gilliland took his record shot, in a room at the top of a bombed-out observation post which is code-named Hotel and known jokingly to soldiers as the Ramadi Inn, are daubed "Kill Them All" and "Kill Like you Mean it".

On another wall are scrawled the words of Senator John McCain: " America is great not because of what she has done for herself but because of what she has done for others."

The juxtaposition of macho slogans and noble political rhetoric encapsulates the dirty, dangerous and often callous job the sniper has to carry out as an integral part of a campaign ultimately being waged to help the Iraqi people.

With masterful understatement, Lt Col Robert Roggeman, the Task Force 2/69 commander, conceded: "The romantic in me is disappointed with the reception we've received in Ramadi," a town of 400,000 on the banks of the Euphrates where graffiti boasts, with more than a degree of accuracy: "This is the graveyard of the Americans".

"We're the outsiders, the infidels," he said. "Every time somebody goes out that main gate he might not come back. It's still a running gun battle."

Highly effective though they are, he worries about the burden his snipers have to bear. "It's a very God-like role. They have the power of life and death that, if not held in check, can run out of control. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

"Every shot has to be measured against the Rules of Engagement [ROE], positive identification and proportionality."

Staff Sgt Gilliland explains that his Shadow team operates at the "borderlines" of the ROE, making snap judgements about whether a figure in the crosshairs is an insurgent or not.

"Hunters give their animals respect," he said, spitting out a mouthful of chewing tobacco. "If you have no respect for what you do you're not going to be very good or you're going to make a mistake. We try to give the benefit of the doubt.

"You've got to live with it. It's on your conscience. It's something you've got to carry away with you. And if you shoot somebody just walking down the street, then that's probably going to haunt you."

Although killing with a single shot carries an enormous cachet within the sniper world, their most successful engagements have involved the shooting a up to 10 members of a single IED team.

"The one-shot-one-kill thing is one of beauty but killing all the bad dudes is even more attractive," said Staff Sgt Gilliland, whose motto is "Move fast, shoot straight and leave the rest to the counsellors in 10 years" and signs off his e-mails with "silent souls make.308 holes".

Whether Shadow team's work will ultimately make a difference in Iraq is open to question. No matter how many insurgents they shoot, there seems no shortage of recruits to plant bombs.

Col John Gronski, the overall United States commander in Ramadi, said there could not be a military solution. "You could spend years putting snipers out and killing IED emplacers and at the political level it would make no difference."

As they prepare to leave Iraq, however, Staff Sgt Gilliland and his men hope that they have bought a little more time for the country's politicians to fix peace and stability in their sights.