Iran accused of training militias

A U.S. military spokesman accused Iranian leaders Monday of using guerrillas from Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group to train militiamen fighting American troops in Iraq.

The Hezbollah guerrillas also have organized attacks in Iraq, he said, including a January ambush on an Iraqi-U.S. outpost that killed five American soldiers.

The United States has repeatedly accused the Shiite Muslim-led government in Tehran of aiding Shiite Muslims and even Sunni Arab forces opposed to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, charges Iran has denied.

Monday’s accusations included the added twist of the alleged Hezbollah connection, which Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the military spokesman, said became clear with the arrest in March of a man identified as a Lebanese-born Hezbollah operative.

A Hezbollah spokesman in Beirut told Reuters news service he was aware of Bergner’s accusations but had no comment.

Bergner said the operative, whom he identified as Ali Musa Daqduq, was carrying a false ID and pretended to be a deaf-mute when he was detained March 20 in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

A few weeks later, Bergner said, interviews as well as computer records and other material confirmed that Daqduq had served Hezbollah for 24 years, including coordinating protection of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

At the time of his capture, Daqduq was carrying documents that described tactics for attacking Iraqi and U.S. forces, one of which Bergner displayed at a news conference Monday. Daqduq also carried a journal detailing his involvement with Iraqi militants who attempted to attack British, Iraqi and U.S. forces in southern Iraq and in Diyala province.

In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini derided the accusations as well as Daqduq’s purported account.

“It is another silly and ridiculous scenario brought up by Americans based on a baseless remark of a person,” he told The Times in a brief telephone interview. “It is a sheer lie, and it is ridiculous.”

Bergner said that Daqduq was captured along with two Iraqi brothers, Qais and Laith Khazali, and that all three were working with Iran to develop a Hezbollah-like network of cells in Iraq called the Iraqi Special Groups. Iran’s secretive Quds Force, a unit of its Revolutionary Guard, was overseeing the training, which cost between $750,000 and $3 million a month and included instruction at three camps near Tehran, Bergner said.

“Our intelligence reveals that senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity,” he said, without defining “senior leadership.” When pressed, Bergner said it would be “hard to imagine” that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was unaware of the alleged activities.

In February, U.S. officials in Iraq accused the supreme leader of having a hand in the smuggling of explosives across the border from Iran but then backed off that allegation. The latest claims come at an especially sensitive time for U.S.-Iranian relations, which have remained contentious despite meetings between officials from the two countries in Baghdad and in Egypt.

U.S. casualties in Iraq have increased since President Bush announced a military clampdown in February, and a growing number of deaths are being blamed on highly lethal explosives that Washington accuses Iran of providing. If U.S. military deaths continue to number in the triple digits, as they have for each of the last three months, military and political leaders may have a tough time convincing Congress that the war is worthwhile when they deliver a progress report expected in September.

Pointing the finger at Iran and now at Hezbollah could deflect blame from Iraqi security forces for their inability to quell continued violence.

The U.S. military has said that it suspects Iraqi militia fighters or insurgents did not have the sophistication to carry out the January attack on the outpost in Karbala, south of Baghdad. In that incident, attackers dressed up in U.S. uniforms or a close facsimile and made it past Iraqi checkpoints at a government building.

Early today, the U.S. military reported that a Kiowa helicopter was shot down Monday by insurgents south of Baghdad. The pilots escaped with minor injuries, and an Air Force jet destroyed the aircraft with two laser-guided bombs, a military statement said.

On Monday, the U.S. military reported that two U.S. soldiers and a Marine were killed during combat operations in Al Anbar province Sunday. A third soldier was killed in a roadside bombing Monday in Salahuddin province, the military said.

The deaths brought to 3,584 the number of American troops killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks military casualties.

The military also announced Monday that a third U.S. soldier was charged with murder in the deaths of three Iraqis and an alleged cover-up attempt this spring while stationed near the town of Iskandariya, about 25 miles south of Baghdad.

Sgt. Evan Vela of Phoenix, Idaho, was charged with premeditated murder, wrongfully placing a weapon beside a dead Iraqi, making a false official statement and obstruction of justice.

Also Monday, the Iraqi army reported mortar shelling at 2 a.m. targeting the Polish-run Echo base outside the city of Diwaniya, about 95 miles south of Baghdad. Two U.S. jets responded by bombing two nearby neighborhoods, demolishing nine houses and killing seven people, including women and children, and wounding 26 others, according to a member of the Iraqi army’s 8th Division.

At 9 a.m., guards at the government building in Diwaniya fired at locals gathered outside to protest the morning bombings. A 17-year-old boy was shot and later died, according to the Iraqi army and the local office of the political party associated with Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, who has criticized the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The U.S. military could not confirm details of the Diwaniya incidents.

A suicide car bomb attack on the guesthouse of a tribal leader south of Fallouja killed four, including a child, and injured 10 about 7 p.m. Monday, police said. Sheik Kamil Mohammed Dahal, who recently sided with U.S. forces against Al Qaeda fighters in the area, was among the injured.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

tina.susman@latimes.com

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Wail Alhafith and Said Rifai in Baghdad, special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and special correspondents in Baghdad, Hillah and Mosul contributed to this report.