Amerikanerne kom over en liste over alle utenlandske jihadister som har entret Irak via Syria. Den viser at av 700 jihadister som har kommet inn siden august 2006 er 305 fra Saudi-Arabia.

The New York Times, meanwhile, quoted senior American military officials as saying that Saudi Arabia and Libya were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year to serve as suicide bombers or to facilitate other attacks.

The report said that data came largely from documents and computers discovered in September, when a U.S. raid near the Syrian border targeted insurgents believed to be responsible for smuggling the vast majority of foreign fighters into Iraq.

A key discovery was a listing of hometowns and other details for more than 700 fighters brought into Iraq since August 2006, the newspaper said, according to the U.S. officials who were not further identified. Saudis accounted for the largest number of fighters listed with 305, followed by Libyans with 137. United States officials have previously offered only rough estimates of nationalities of such fighters.

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