BAGHDAD, June 18: US and Iraqi forces were surrounding the Sunni rebel bastion of Ramadi on Sunday with new checkpoints on all the town’s entry and exit roads as Al Qaeda said it carried out Baghdad bombings that killed 36 people on Saturday.
A US military spokesman said security forces surrounded Ramadi, capital of the western Al-Anbar province, in a bid to bottle up the insurgents.
He said extra checkpoints were set up “to restrict the flow of insurgents, but citizens will still be able to enter and leave the city.”
“This is just one part of a long-term plan to restore stability in Ramadi,” he said.
He said the operation was “part of the continuous operations that the coalition forces and Iraqi forces have been conducting for several months.”
But on Sunday the forces were “getting more into it and focusing on multiple sites used by the insurgents to plan and conduct terrorist attacks and store weapons.”
The operation was being conducted jointly by US soldiers, marines and Iraqi troops, with the US military’s 1st Brigade of the 1st armoured division acting as lead unit.
He said the forces had set up assembly areas for displaced people from the town to the east and west of Ramadi, but added: “We have no idea how many people have left their homes.”
Earlier on Sunday the military insisted that it had neither launched any major operation at Fallujah nor deployed additional troops to the restive city after the BBC reported overnight troop movements on its southern outskirts.
The BBC said that late Saturday US and Iraqi government troops deployed on access roads to Ramadi from the south in an attempt to cut rebel supply lines.
Meanwhile, Baghdad remained relatively quiet, but for the kidnapping of 10 bakers — despite tens of thousands of Iraqi and US troops on the streets for the fifth straight day in a new security plan ordered by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. “Gunmen in five civilian cars stormed the bakery in the Shia neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah and took away the 10,” an official said.
Police also found nine bodies in Baghdad of men who were tortured to death. Rebels killed nine people, six of them in and around Baquba.—AFP
