Attacks in Baghdad fall 80 percent

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Attacks by insurgents and rivalsectarian militias have fallen up to 80 percent in Baghdad andconcrete blast walls that divide the capital can soon beremoved, a senior Iraqi military official said on Saturday.

Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar said the success of ayear-long clampdown named "Operation Imposing Law" had reinedin the savage violence between majority Shi'ites and minoritySunni Arabs dominant under Saddam Hussein.

"In a time when you could hear nothing but explosions,gunfire and the screams of mothers and fathers and sons, andsee bodies that were burned and dismembered, the people ofBaghdad were awaiting Operation Imposing Law," Qanbar toldreporters.

Qanbar pointed to the number of dead bodies turning up onthe capital's streets as an indicator of its success.

In the six weeks to the end of 2006, 43 bodies were founddumped in the city each day as fierce sectarian fightingthreatened to turn into full scale civil war.

That figure fell to just four a day in 2008, in the periodup to February 12, said Qanbar who headed up the plan launchedby Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

"Various enemy activities" had also fallen by between 75and 80 percent since the security plan was implemented, hesaid.

Central to the success of the plan has been the erection of12-foot (3.5-metre) high concrete walls that snake across vastswathes of the city.

The walls were designed to stop car bombings blamed on alQaeda that turned markets and open areas into killing fields.While they have provided security, some have cut off entirecommunities, turning them into big jails, according to locals.

Qanbar said the walls could be taken down "in the comingmonths" and predicted the improved situation in Baghdad wouldtranslate to greater security elsewhere.

"HEART IS HEALTHY"

"Continued security in Baghdad will directly increasesecurity in the provinces, particularly those around Baghdad.If the heart is healthy, the body is too," he said.

The United States says attacks have fallen across Iraq by60 percent since June on the back of security clampdowns,30,000 extra U.S. troops and a ceasefire ordered by Shi'itecleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Key to the fall in violence was also a decision by SunniArab tribal leaders to turn against al Qaeda in late 2006 andform neighbourhood security units, which man checkpoints andprovide tips on militant hideouts.

However, their relationship with the authorities remainstense. The Shi'ite-led government is suspicious of the units,called "concerned local citizens" (CLCs) by the U.S. military,whose number includes former insurgents.

"Everyone should know, that the official security forcesrepresent the country. And it is the one side that has theright to bear arms and impose security," Qanbar said.

In a sign of the fragile nature of the relationship, oneCLC group said on Saturday it was suspending its activitiesafter three of its unit were killed in an incident near thetown of Jurf al-Sukr, south of Baghdad.

The unit blamed American soldiers for Friday's deaths. TheU.S. military said attack helicopters had responded withrockets after coalition forces came under small-arms fire. Itsaid the incident was under investigation but gave no furtherdetails.

Sabah al-Janabi, head of the awakening groups north ofHilla, said the CLCs had lost 19 men during the last month andhalf in incidents he blamed on U.S. forces.

The CLCs number some 80,000 mainly Sunni Arabs. Qanbar saidBaghdad was working on compensating victims of mistakes by theIraqi army and the multi-national forces in Iraq.

(Additional reporting by Michael Holden and Mohammed Abbas,Writing by Mohammed Abbas: Editing by Robert Woodward)