U.S. sees decline in Iranian-linked bombs in Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of incidents in Iraq involving armor-piercing bombs that the United States says come from Iran has declined in recent months, U.S. military officials say.

The incidents declined by 16 percent from April to May and are expected to decline 65 percent from May to June, said an official from Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for operations in the Middle East.

Another senior military official said on Friday that April's figure for the incidents of so-called explosively formed penetrators or projectiles (EFPs) was an all-time high. He confirmed the total had declined since then.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity and neither provided the raw numbers of incidents, which are classified.

EFPs are a particularly deadly form of roadside bomb. The United States has accused the elite Qods force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards of supplying the bombs to Shi'ite militias in Iraq for attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Iran has denied stoking violence in Iraq and blames instability there on the presence of U.S. forces.

The U.S. military counts an EFP attack, or the discovery of a planted EFP, as an incident.

The second official said he believed the decline was due to stepped-up operations by Iraq's security forces against Shi'ite militias like the Mehdi Army, also known as the Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM), and its so-called special groups.

"The Iraqis have really put the pressure on the special groups and the JAM militia," the official said.

The Central Command official was less certain, saying it was hard to know how much of the decline was due to public pressure on Iran and how much was based on other factors.

"Clearly the numbers are down," the official said earlier this week. "What you don't know right now, necessarily, is why we've had great effect... what we want to do is be able to sustain that."

(Reporting by Andrew Gray)