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Baghdad gears up for crackdown
06/02/2007 09:10 - (SA)
Baghdad - Bombings and mortar attacks killed dozens across Baghdad on Monday as Iraqi troops set up new checkpoints and an Iraqi general took command - indications that the much-awaited operation to restore peace to the capital is gearing up nearly a month after it was announced.
With little sign of an end to the carnage, many Iraqis have begun complaining that the security drive has been too slow in starting, allowing extremists free rein to launch spectacular attacks that have killed nearly 1 000 in the past week.
Monday's death toll supported their frustration. At least 74 people were killed or found dead across the country - all but seven of them in Baghdad.
With so much at stake, US commanders have moved methodically to plan the operation and assemble the force, eager to avoid the mistakes that accompanied two failed crackdowns last year.
The US military officials said on Monday they consider the operation to have been under way ever since Bush signed the order last month to start moving troops to Iraq. US officers offered assurances that once the operation gets rolling, Iraqis will begin to see a difference.
"It's going to be much more than this city has ever seen and it's going to be a rolling surge," Colonel Douglass Heckman, the senior adviser to the 9th Iraqi army division, said of the operation.
Crackdown nearing
But Iraqi politicians - Shi'ite and Sunni alike - urged the government to speed up implementation of the plan, which President Bush announced on January 11. The operation would put thousands of US and Iraqi troops on the street to protect civilians against sectarian bombers and death squads.
In a sign that the crackdown is near, Iraqi troops manned a major new checkpoint on Monday at the northern gate to Baghdad, searching cars and trucks heading to and from Sunni insurgent areas to the north. Soldiers and police said the checkpoint was set up as part of the security plan.
Elsewhere, Rahim al-Daraji, a senior official in Sadr City, said police were already moving into the capital's sprawling Shi'ite slum, stronghold of the notorious Mahdi Army militia.
And Lieutenant General Abboud Gambar, who will direct the operation, took charge of his still-unfinished command centre in a former Saddam Hussein palace located inside the American-controlled Green Zone.
Gambar, who was taken prisoner by US troops in the 1991 Gulf War, will have two Iraqi deputies, one on each side of the Tigris River, which flows through the centre of the capital. The city will be divided into nine districts, each with as many as 600 US soldiers to back up Iraqi troops who will take the lead in the security drive.
- AP
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