Baghdad, Iraq ? An increase in truck hijackings, carjackings and kidnappings around the southern approaches to Baghdad suggests to some intelligence officials that insurgents are running out of money.

Soldiers on the front lines also believe that militants are strapped for cash and turning to crime to pay for the insurgency.

Many criminal ambushes are occurring just south of Baghdad as vehicles, particularly gasoline trucks, head toward the capital. One hot spot for hijackings is the major roadway that runs between Baghdad and the town of Salman Pak, where officials suspect much of the stolen fuel and other goods end up.

Salman Pak is a wealthy Sunni town that Lt. Bryan Suits describes as “the Saddam regime’s Palm Beach,” and one that has little American presence. He said the highway from the town of Jisr Diyala, just outside Baghdad, to Salman Pak is littered with the burned-out carcasses of fuel trucks that are first drained of their contents to sell on the black market.

Suits, the information officer for the Washington National Guard that has been assigned to the area for the past year, said an average of one 35,000-liter truck is ambushed each week, and the gas sold for $1 or $2 a liter.

He believes the cash is used to pay for roadside bombs and for Iraqis to plant them. The insurgents are also expected to make cash payments to the families of rebels who are killed.

“They are not in it for the money,” Suits said, referring to the crime wave. “But without the money, they’re not in it,” he added, referring to the war.

In Washington, a Defense Department official confirmed that insurgents were facing a cash crunch. He said wire transfers of money from outside Iraq have been traced to guerrilla cells and cut off by the United States.

“Are funding streams drying up? Sure. Have they stepped up (fuel) hijackings to fill a void? We don’t know,” said the official.

The crime surge south of Baghdad came soon after the U.S. offensive in Fallujah.