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Petraeus: 2 abducted soldiers believed alive

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said he believes he knows who abducted the three soldiers missing since a May 12 attack, and that as of Friday morning he believed at least two of them were still alive.

“We know who that guy is,” Gen. David Petraeus said in a May 18 interview with Army Times. “He’s sort of an affiliate of al-Qaida. ... He’s the big player down in that area. We’ve tangled with him before.”

U.S. forces have been searching for Spc. Alex Jimenez, Pfc. Joseph Anzack and Pvt. Byron Fouty since they went missing May 12 after an early-morning attack on their two-Humvee convoy in the village of Qarghuli, 12 miles west of Mahmudiyah. The attack destroyed both vehicles and killed four other U.S. soldiers and one Iraqi soldier. All the U.S. soldiers were assigned to 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team.

A tipster passed the information on who likely conducted the attack to U.S. forces, Petraeus said.

“Somebody’s given us the names of all the guys that participated in it and told us how they did it, and all the rest of that stuff,” he said. “Now, we have to verify that at some point in time, but it sounds spot on. We’ve had all kinds of tips down there. ... We just tragically haven’t found the individuals. But on the other hand, they haven’t been able to smuggle out, at least to my knowledge, the traditional video.”

Petraeus said he didn’t know for sure if the three missing soldiers were alive or dead. “As of this morning, we thought there were at least two that were probably still alive,” he said. “At one point in time there was a sense that one of them might have died, but again we just don’t know.”

An Iraqi army intelligence officer involved in the search for the kidnapped U.S. soldiers told The Associated Press that two men detained during the sweep have confessed that they took part in the attack.

The two captives said there were 13 men involved in the assault and they split into two groups afterward, with the ringleader taking the kidnapped soldiers with his band of men. The two men said they did not know where the soldiers had been taken, according to the Iraqi intelligence officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The two men also told U.S. forces the location of the weapons cache used in the attack. The U.S. military later confiscated a large number of weapons at the site, the intelligence officer said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.