Most Iraq Suicide Bombs by Foreigners. (Hat tip: Daniel.)

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The vast majority of suicide attackers in Iraq are thought to be foreigners — mostly Saudis and other Gulf Arabs — and the trend has become more pronounced this year with North Africans also streaming in to carry out deadly missions, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

The bombers are recruited from Sunni communities, smuggled into Iraq from Syria after receiving religious indoctrination, and then quickly bundled into cars or strapped with explosive vests and sent to their deaths, the officials told The Associated Press. The young men are not so much fighters as human bombs — a relatively small but deadly component of the Iraqi insurgency.

“The foreign fighters are the ones that most often are behind the wheel of suicide car bombs, or most often behind any suicide situation,” said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston, spokesman for the Multinational Force in Iraq.

Officials have long believed that non-Iraqis infiltrating the country through its porous borders with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia were behind most suicide missions, and the wave of bloody strikes in recent months has confirmed that thinking.