BAGHDAD, April 21: Residents of a dangerous Baghdad district on Saturday accused US forces of walling them behind a five-kilometre security barrier, a move that they said would fuel the city’s already bitter sectarian divisions.

On April 10, US paratroopers began hauling six-tonne sections of concrete wall into place around the Sunni district of Adhamiyah, one of the minority community's last enclaves in Shia east Baghdad.

The wall is designed to prevent Shia death squads from launching attacks to drive out the Sunnis, and to prevent Sunni insurgents from using the pocket as a base for raids and bombing runs into Shia areas.

Eleven days after the project began, the highway dividing Adhamiyah from its Shia neighbours is lined with tall concrete barriers. A US military statement said troops would work nightly until it is completed.

“The idea is to curb some of the self-sustaining violence by controlling who has access to the neighbourhoods,” said Captain Marc Sanborn, a military engineer from the 82nd Airborne Division, according to the US statement.

The area is to become what the US military called a “gated community” protected by barriers and checkpoints manned by Iraqi troops.

Adhamiyah's suspicious residents are unconvinced, however, and many fiercely oppose the idea. Um Haider, a 54-year-old housewife from inside the cordon, branded the barrier a “weird idea.”

“I'm astonished by the way officials think. Is that reasonable? Protecting Al-Adhamiyah by segregating it from adjacent neighbourhoods?” she asked, when AFP contacted her by telephone.

“Erecting concrete walls between neighbourhoods is not a solution to the collapse in security and the rampant violence. If so, Baghdadis would find themselves in a maze of high walls overnight,” she said.

Perfume dealer Zaid Abdullah said: “We do not want to see segregating walls between us and the rest of Baghdad. I'm afraid this wall will isolate us, and stricter security procedures stop us from getting out.”—AFP