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Violence in Iraq 'drops 70%'
23/10/2007 07:15 - (SA)
Baghdad - Violence in Iraq has dropped by 70% since the end of June, when US forces completed their build-up of 30 000 extra troops to stabilise the war-torn country, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.
The ministry released the new figures as bomb blasts in
Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul killed five people. Six gunmen died in clashes with police in the holy Shi'ite city
of Kerbala, south-west of the capital.
Washington began sending reinforcements to Iraq in February to try to buy Iraq's feuding political leaders time to reach a political accommodation to end violence between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs that has killed tens of thousands and forced millions from their homes.
While the leaders have failed to agree on key laws aimed at
reconciling the country's warring sects, the troop build-up has succeeded in quelling the violence.
Under the plan, US troops left their large bases and set
up combat outposts in neighbourhoods while launching a series of summer offensives against Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda, other Sunni Arab militants and Shi'ite militias in the Baghdad beltway.
Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul-Karim Khalaf
told reporters there had been a 70% reduction in violence
countrywide in the three months from July to September from the previous quarter.
In Baghdad, considered the epicentre of the violence because of its mix of Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs, car bombs had decreased by 67% and roadside bombs by 40%, he said. There had been a 28% drop in the number of bodies found dumped in the capital's streets.
- Reuters
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