Agence France-Presse, 18 July 2007
KABUL (AFP) - NATO forces in Afghanistan said they had found several Iranian-made armour-piercing explosives but stressed there was no proof of a formal supply from the neighbouring country.
Thomas Kelly, a US colonel under NATO command, said forces had found several of the so-called "explosively-formed projectiles" that were more sophisticated than the crudely-made bombs usually used by Afghan insurgents.
But the senior spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), US Lieutenant Colonel Claudia Foss, stressed that the alliance had no evidence that the Iranian government was involved in the supply.
Kelly said four of the devices, which are also being used by Iraqi insurgents and Lebanon's Hezbollah, were found in Herat near the Iranian border and in Kabul, where a fifth device had harmlessly exploded early this year.
The colonel told a Kabul media briefing that the bombs were "something called explosively-formed projectiles (EFPs)... They're designed to penetrate armoured vehicles.
"These are very sophisticated IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and they're really not manufactured in any other places other than, our knowledge is, Iran," he said, adding that the explosives were factory-made.
Taliban insurgents commonly attack US-led, NATO and Afghan targets with roadside bombs and other explosives made from old ammunition such as mortars and rockets left over from the war-torn country's decades of conflicts.
"The insurgents may have access to this device but may not yet know how to use them or know if they're effective or not," Kelly said.
Foss, however, told the same briefing that ISAF's commander had previously said "that we have no evidence of any formal supply of weapons from Iran."
"For decades this country has been under attack and we find weapons all the time but, as far as any formal supply, there's been no evidence."
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in June that "substantial" quantities of Iranian weapons are flowing into Afghanistan and that it was difficult to believe the Iranian government was not aware of it.
The United States has long accused Iran's Quds Force, an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, of arming and training Shiite extremist groups in Iraq.
But in recent months US military officials have said Iranian-made weapons including EFPs have also turned up in Afghanistan.
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Citation: "NATO says Iranian-made explosives found in Afghanistan," Agence France-Presse, 18 July 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070718/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestnatoiranweapons
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