Terrorist attacks continue to claim scores of lives in Iraq virtually every day. In the latest bombing, at least eight people were killed Wednesday in western Baghdad.
Anatoly Safonov, a Russian presidential special envoy on the fight against terrorism and international organized crime, spelled out the danger the situation presented. "In essence, we saw that Iraq is an assembly line for cloning, giving birth to new and new generations [of terrorists]," he said.
Russia has criticized Iraq's authorities for failing to apprehend members of Iraq-based cell of al-Qaeda responsible for the killing of Russian diplomats in June. One Russian Embassy employee was shot June 3 in an attack on a car and four others were abducted and executed.
"It [Iraq] is literally turning into a terrorist corporation," he said. "But what is even more frightening is that the veterans of these events go to different countries and carry with them the virus of terrorism."
Concerns have been raised in many countries about the influence of radical Islamic preachers in mosques, but Safonov suggested that houses of worship were not where security services should be looking for terrorists.
"Terrorism is not born in mosques as we thought in the past, but in prisons where terrorists serve their sentences," he said.
President Vladimir Putin gave orders in June for the killers of the diplomats to be found and killed.
Russia's security chief Nikolai Patrushev said in August he was convinced that killers of five Russian embassy employees in Iraq would be found.
