Deadly arms flow from frontier 10 miles awayBy Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent

Iran is continuing to supply weapons, money and technical training to terrorists in Iraq who are killing British soldiers, military sources have claimed. The weapons used against British forces in Basra are believed to be funded and smuggled from Iran whose border is just over 10 miles from the southern Iraq city. Military sources have disclosed that there is "very, very strong intelligence'' that elements inside Iran have continued to fund and support the gun-running.
advertisement There is still no "concrete evidence'', in part, it is claimed, because Iranian weapons are designed to be untraceable. "But we know when something goes bang there is an Iranian influence on that bomb,'' an intelligence official said. In Basra, Iranian trucks could be seen going through customs with little hindrance from the department of border enforcement.
British soldiers claimed that when they appeared the guards would spring into action, stopping vehicles, but as soon as they left, the customs officers waved the traffic through. For the past year British intelligence has also been aware that the insurgents in southern Iraq had the technology to penetrate armour. In an incident that has not previously been reported, an explosive device penetrated a Warrior armoured vehicle in Amarah last year but by luck no one inside was injured. However, it was a warning that the technology which had been killing scores of American troops in their armoured vehicles in the rest of Iraq was now with the terrorists in the south. It is believed that the first fatality inside a Warrior occurred earlier this year when Pte Michael Tench was killed by an "explosively formed projectile" in Basra. At the time, the Ministry of Defence asked The Daily Telegraph not to publish the information for fear of endangering other soldiers. The device is simple but lethal - even against the most advanced armour. A conical piece of steel or copper is moulded into a shape similar to a Chinaman's hat. A large amount of explosive is packed behind the tip of the hat. When detonated it sends a "molten slug" of extremely hot metal hurtling towards the target at 3,300ft per second. This rapidly burrows through the armoured plates and, if successful, some gets through causing horrific injuries inside the vehicle. EFPs can penetrate four inches of armour. The bomb was most likely triggered by a command wire which only required a terrorist to press a button as the vehicle passed over the target. EFPs have been in use since the Second World War and were further developed by the terror group the Red Army Faction to assassinate a German banker in 1989.
EFPs require skilful engineering and intelligence reports suggest they have been "very well machined". There are no markings on the devices.