By NNN-KUNA
London : Five Britons kidnapped in Baghdad last month are being held by a militant group armed, trained and funded by Iran, the US commander in Iraq said Thursday.
General David Petraeus told The Times newspaper there was “a very intensive effort” under way to find the group, snatched by up to 40 men, some in police uniform, from the Finance Ministry on May 29.
And he said be believed that they were taken by a “secret sect” of the Mahdi Army in retaliation for the killing of the Shiite militia’s leader Abu Qadir in Basra. “We think that it is the same network that killed our soldiers in Karbala in an operation back in January,” he added.
“We killed the head of that network less than a week before the operation that detained those British civilians.”
General Petraeus said they were not “rank and file” Mahdi Army members. “They are trained in Iran, equipped with Iranian weapons, and advised by Iran. The Iranian involvement here we have found to be much, much more significant than we thought before,” he continued.
The general said there had been several unsuccessful operations to find the five.”We just have not had the right intelligence. There is a very intensive effort ongoing to try to locate and rescue them.”
Four of the kidnap victims are security professionals working for the firm “GardaWorld.” The fifth is an expert who was working for the US management consultancy firm “BearingPoint.”
Iraqi forces have also established a special battalion of soldiers and police officers to look for the men.
The British Foreign Office has said that diplomats have made contact with religious and community leaders in a bid to find out who was behind the abduction.