IRA behind bombs in Iraq?

Eight British soldiers and two private security guards killed during recent insurgent ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly advanced roadside bomb first developed by the IRA, the Independent on Sunday reported.

This contradicts Britain’s recent claims that the sophisticated roadside bombs were supplied by the Hezbollah terror movement via the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

But the technology reached the Middle East as a result of the IRA?s long time co-operation with Palestinian groups, some of which used to be sponsored by Saddam Hussein?s Baath party, a former British Agent told the Independent. “There is no doubt in my mind that the technology used to kill our troops in Basra is the same British technology from a decade ago.”

British intelligence coordinated with the IRA in the development of these bombs thinking that intimate knowledge of the technology would enable security services to counter the attacks. “Unfortunately, no one could see back then that this technology would be used to kill British soldiers thousands of miles away in a different war,” a senior British intelligence source explained.

Iran denied any direct or indirect ties to the attacks and an Iranian ambassador alluded to a fear that Britain would use the issue of Iraq “to put pressure on Iran during nuclear negotiations.”

Over the weekend Iran alleged that the British were behind a third round of explosions in the oil rich Khuzestan province in southwest Iran since June. “We are very suspicious about the role of British forces in perpetrating such terrorist acts,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the ISNA student news agency.

“The claim may not be as far-fetched as we?d like to believe,” says the tendowningstreet blog. However, “Iran does not make accusations without sufficient evidence to support them,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in reference to Britain’s recent accusations. The British government reject these allegations as “completely without foundation.”

In Basra, The military officer in charge of all investigations against British troops serving in Iraq was found dead of an apparent suicide on Saturday. Capt. Ken Masters had been under pressure to contest a number of allegations relating to incidents in which Iraqi civilians have been killed. Master’s biggest investigation was ordered after the incident on September 19 when two British SAS troopers were rescued from a Jameat police station. The dramatic rescue led to a day of violent confrontations on the Basra streets which claimed the lives of seven Iraqis and injured 43, many of them police, according to Iraqi authorities.