Militants streaming into Iraq

LONDON -- Across Europe and the Middle East, young militant Muslim men are answering a call issued by Osama bin Laden and other extremists, and leaving home to join the fight against the American- led occupation in Iraq, according to senior counterterrorism officials based in six countries.

The intelligence officials say that since late summer they have detected an increasingly steady stream of itinerant Muslim militants headed for Iraq. They estimate that hundreds of young men from an array of countries have now arrived in Iraq by crossing the Syrian or Iranian borders.

But intelligence officials say this influx is not necessarily evidence of coordination by al-Qaida or other terrorist groups, since it remains unclear if these men are under the control of any one leader or what, if any, role they have had in the kind of deadly attacks that shook Baghdad on Monday. One European intelligence official called the foreign recruits "foot soldiers with limited or no training."

A senior British official, who was in Iraq as recently as September, said the majority of foreign men captured there are from the Middle East -- Syria, Lebanon and Yemen -- and from North African countries. He described them as "young, angry men" motivated by the "anti-British, anti-American rhetoric that fills their ears every day."

Signs of a movement to Iraq have also been detected in Europe. Jean-Louis Bruguiere, France's top investigative judge on terrorism, said dozens of poor and middle-class Muslim men had left France for Iraq since the summer. He said some of the men appeared to have been inspired by exhortations of al-Qaida leaders, even if they were not trained by al-Qaida.

A senior German intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the authorities had detected cases of immigrants in Germany trying to go to Iraq. "We know that in Germany there are people in the militant Muslim scene who are willing to go to other places to participate in jihad, including Iraq," the official said.

There are scattered reports from other places, including Saudi Arabia, where a senior Saudi official said two Saudi militants, believed to have ties to al-Qaida, were missing from the kingdom and believed by the authorities to have gone to Iraq.

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