Iraqi Defense Minister Abd Al-Qadir Al-Ubaydi said May 4 that Iraqi army searches in Basra turned up a new surface-to-surface missile.
Reliable Iraqi intelligence sources said that the missile was an Iranian Falaq 1, made in 2007, and that this was the first missile with such great destruction potential to be found in Iraq.
The sources said that if many such missiles had been brought into Iraq, "we are on the brink of a security catastrophe, both Iraqi and regional."
Hinting that the missile could have been sent from Iran together with a launch crew, the sources added that the launching of such missiles required great technical knowhow, and that at this point the militias were not likely to have such knowhow.
The sources also noted that Hizbullah used similar Iranian missiles in the July 2006 war against Israel.
Source: Al-Zaman, London, May 5, 2008
