Troops set for massive Baghdad crackdown: Bush makes surprise visit
BAGHDAD, June 13: More than 40,000 Iraqi and US forces will launch a security crackdown in Baghdad on Wednesday, a senior Ministry of Defence official said on Tuesday, as US President George W. Bush made a susprise visit to Iraqi capital and met Iraqi leaders.
“Armoured personnel carriers and tanks will be used. We will depend on intelligence to find suspects, “ Maj-Gen Abdel Aziz Mohammed told Reuters.
“There is no time limit for ending this operation because it is a strategic plan through which we are determined to impose order in tense areas,” he said.
“The number of the combined forces participating in the security plan will be more than 40,000,” he added.
Mohammed, echoing a plan envisaged by US military commanders, said security would eventually be handed over to Iraqi police.
He said two regiments from the Ministry of Defence, two regiments from Interior Ministry and multinational forces would be deployed in the operations.
Security measures in Baghdad were being beefed up.
The defense ministry said the nightly curfew will begin two and a half hours earlier at 8:30pm (0930am PST) and cars will be banned from the streets on Friday afternoons during prayer time.
In addition, there will be massive deployments of US and Iraqi troops to troubled neighborhoods in the capital, said General Abdel Aziz Mohammed, without saying when the measures would come into effect.
US and Iraqi forces have launched several crackdowns across Iraqi aimed at rooting out insurgents and militants seeking to topple the government but they have failed to ease violence.
The Bush visit was marked by a series of bomb attacks in which at least 36 people were killed across Iraq on Tuesday, including 18 in a bombing campaign in the oil city of Kirkuk.
Five car bombs, several of them involving suicide attackers, rocked the ethnically diverse city that has been more known individual killings between ethnic and sectarian groups.
Another attack was foiled when guards shot dead the driver of an explosives-laden car as he drove it toward Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party’s HQ. The car did not explode.
The bombing campaign comes after the arrest in Kirkuk of eight suspected insurgents by US and Iraqi forces on Sunday.
After Wednesday’s killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda in Iraq said it had chosen a new leader, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, and promised to continue the work of slain militant leader.—Agencies
