Killings and attacks in Baghdad have slumped significantly since the launch of a security plan one month ago, United States officials said on Wednesday, even as car bombs claimed more lives in the capital.
”There has been an over 50% reduction in murders and executions” since Operation Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law) began, the spokesperson for US forces in Iraq, Major General William Caldwell, told reporters in Baghdad.
Caldwell also said the US military believed that radical Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is still in self-imposed exile Iran, despite fierce denials by his followers.
”Twenty-four hours ago he was not here in Iraq. All indications are that he’s still in Iran,” Caldwell said.
Sadr’s supporters deny reports that the firebrand cleric fled the country in January ahead of the joint US-Iraqi security sweep that has targeted his militia, mainly in Baghdad.
”We are seeing positive signs on streets,” said Caldwell. ”We know there is a decrease in violence, but we still need to be patient.
”Two of five additional brigades are in place. About the flow and movement of the third brigade … it is moving in Kuwait as we speak. All forces will be here by the end of May.”
The spokesperson for Fardh al-Qanoon, Brigadier General Qassim Atta Al-Mussawi, at a separate press conference listed the successes of the security plan, involving 90 000 Iraqi and US forces.
”A total of 265 civilians and 57 military [personnel], including nine officers, have been killed since the plan kicked off on February 14,” Mussawi said. This compared with the preceding month when 1 440 people were killed.
He also said that 94 ”terrorists” were killed by Iraqi and US forces since the launch of the plan, compared with 19 in the preceding month.
Security forces had arrested ”713 terrorists and 1 052 terrorist suspects compared with 169 terrorists before the plan was put into action”, Mussawi said.
The US military is deploying an additional 21 500 ”surge” troops to boost the operation and President George Bush on the weekend approved the sending of another 2 400 soldiers and 2 200 military police as support staff.
The Baghdad security plan is aimed at quelling a year-long bout of bloodletting between rival Sunni and Shi’ite factions.
But despite the flood of troops, violence flared again in Baghdad, with a security official reporting two civilians killed in a suicide car bombing in the south-west Yarmuk district while the US military reported another three US soldiers killed in roadside bombs.
Elsewhere in the country, police were in the firing line, with three police officers, one of them a general, shot dead in the north of the country and the bullet-riddled bodies of two abducted police officers found dumped in the central city of Diwaniyah.
A police lieutenant who was kidnapped on Tuesday along with the other two survived being shot seven times and dumped in a canal and was recovering in hospital in Diwaniyah, a security official said.
One civilian was killed and 14 wounded when a bomb exploded in a market in the northern town of Tuz, near Kirkuk, police said, while three other civilians were reported killed in a spate of attacks in other parts of Iraq.
Police also reported the discovery of eight corpses, two of them headless, in restive Baquba city, about 60km north of Baghdad.
The Iraqi government, as well as the US military, have warned it may be months before any significant improvement in Iraq’s security situation is seen.
”It is going to take many months, but indicators are positive,” Caldwell said. — AFP
