Baghdad Suffers Record Spate Of Sectarian Violence

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — More than a month after the beginning of a highly publicized security crackdown and the killing of militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the number of daily attacks in Baghdad has actually increased.

Iraqi and American forces began stepping up patrols, creating new checkpoints, and conducting additional searches on June 14. But the initiative, called Operation Together Forward, so far has failed to limit the number of attacks in the capital city, according to statistics released by U.S. military forces yesterday.

In the 101 days before the security crackdown, an average of 23.8 attacks occurred daily. In the first 35 days of the operation there was an average of 25.2 attacks a day.

The failure of the security crackdown to decrease the violence is yet another sign of the sectarian conflict that has buffeted this city. Continuing violence across Iraq prompted Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation’s highest-ranking Shiite cleric, to issue a rare public statement yesterday that urged Iraqis to stop attacks against civilians.

“I repeat my call today to all Iraqis of different sects and ethnicities to realize the extent of the danger threatening their country’s future and confront it side by side,” Ayatollah Sistani wrote.

In the statement, which included his personal signature and stamp, Ayatollah Sistani called on people targeting innocent civilians to stop setting off car bombs and carrying out executions and start talking with the government.

Prime Minister al-Maliki and U.S. military leaders have said their priority is securing Baghdad, increasing residents’ feelings of safety by eliminating sectarian militias, death squads, and insurgent fighters.

Although the statistics released yesterday appeared grim, officials tried to put the best face on it. The chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, Major General William Caldwell, said at a news conference yesterday that an upswing in sectarian violence in the last few days had driven the averages higher. In the first month of the operation, he said, the number of daily attacks was about the same as the previous 101 days, at 23.7 a day.

“While the last five days or so should not be an indicator of the Baghdad security plan overall, neither can they be brushed aside,” General Caldwell said. “And again, we will do whatever it takes to bring down the level of violence here in Baghdad.”

The death of Zarqawi in June had led some to hope that the power of foreign militants to mount attacks in Iraq would diminish. Although the effectiveness of Zarqawi’s organization after his death has yet to be tested, it is clear much of the violence in Baghdad is unrelated to foreign militants. Most of the recent killing in Baghdad involves Iraqi Sunni Arab insurgents trading attacks with Shiite death squads.

On Monday, the bodies of 32 Sunni Arab men were found in Baghdad, apparently the victim of Shiite death squads. Those killings were followed by a suicide bombing in a Shiite neighborhood of the southern town of Kufa that killed 57 day laborers.

Military forces in Baghdad have seemed powerless to stop those attacks, and the fighting has led prominent Sunni and Shiite leaders to say their country was gripped by civil war.

The violence continued yesterday morning with a car bomb that killed three and injured 10 in downtown Baghdad. In the afternoon a second car bomb killed two and injured seven others in the Shula neighborhood.

U.S. military forces confirmed they had launched a joint operation with Iraqi security forces in two small cities west of Kirkuk. Thirty-one Iraqi soldiers have been killed in Huwija in the past five weeks, the military said.

The U.S. military statistics showed that in the first four weeks of the security crackdown in Baghdad, attacks had fallen in seven of the city’s 10 districts. General Caldwell said much of the recent violence occurred in a few neighborhoods, which experience roughly 41% of the city’s murders.

“We should note the extreme concentration of attacks in roughly five areas around the city,” General Caldwell said. “This contrasts to the swaths of Baghdad experiencing somewhat relative peace. Hundreds of thousands of Baghdadis live a regular life day in and day out, unmarred by the violent attacks on civilians in the most troubled areas.”


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