Iraq Insurgents Using Children, Corpses for Bombs

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 23, 2005 — -- Iraqi militants this week have suffered some of the heaviest single-day death tolls in the two-year insurgency. But ABC News has learned that a State Department document indicates the insurgency's tactics are continuing to evolve. These new techniques include using children to carry explosive devices and booby-trapping corpses with bombs.

In three days, U.S. and Iraqi troops have killed at least 128 militants nationwide, and military officials announced today that 85 insurgents died during a Tuesday raid in central Iraq.

But, according to the document, a disturbing new pattern is developing in the insurgents' use of improvised explosive devices.

According to the report, "vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices continue to be the weapon of choice for terrorists in Iraq who wish to inflict significant casualties and cause widespread damage." There have been 600 such attacks from May 2004 to January 2005, according to the U.S. Army's National Ground Intelligence Center.

In an effort to bypass standard security countermeasures, Iraqi militants are beginning to use service vehicles, such as garbage trucks, to mount attacks, and are stealing Iraqi national military vehicles to conduct kidnappings, the document says.

Iraqi militants are increasingly converting seemingly harmless objects into bombs as well.

At least five IEDs have been placed in mannequins sometimes dressed as U.S. or Iraqi military personnel, the report says. Human corpses -- and even dead animals -- have also been loaded with explosives and detonated when Iraqi or coalition forces attempt to remove the bodies.

Militants have also embedded explosive devices in "watermelons, trees, tree stumps and on guardrails," the report says.

Insurgent forces have also disguised themselves in an effort to gain access to areas frequented by U.S. and allied forces, the report says.

Iraqi extremists reportedly once posed as a soccer team and played matches adjacent to areas where they intended to conduct ambushes against multinational convoys.

Others have acted as "sheep herders to conduct surveillance activity" and "used children to carry IEDs into sensitive areas."