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Violence ‘down’ after launch of Baghdad security plan

* Suicide bombers kill at least 10
* US soldier killed by roadside bomb

BAGHDAD: Civilian deaths and militant attacks in Baghdad have fallen sharply since a US-backed Baghdad security plan was launched a month ago, an Iraqi military spokesman said on Wednesday.

Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in the capital since February 14 was 265 - a sharp reduction from the 1,440 Iraqis killed in the 30-day period before the plan went into effect.

The number of car bombings was down to 36 from 56, Moussawi told a news conference. Roadside bombs, mortar attacks, kidnappings and assassinations were also down.

Moussawi said the plan, seen as the last chance to stop Iraq from descending into all-out sectarian civil war, had led to an increase in attacks in the area surrounding Baghdad, but he vowed security forces would pursue the militants.

General Abboud Qanbar, the commander of the offensive, warned militants to abandon their fight or face further force. “I present a clear message to those terrorists and those who don’t want the plan to succeed and return security to Baghdad ... to recalculate their positions and return to using logic and the correct path before its too late,” he said. “Otherwise the feet of Mesopotamia’s honourable soldiers will crush them and throw them into the garbage of history,” Qanbar added.

Meanwhile, suicide bombers struck a market in northern Iraq and an Iraqi military checkpoint in Baghdad on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people.

In other violence on Wednesday, a municipal council chief and three other people were shot to death as they were driving in the neighbourhood of Azamiyah in Baghdad. The head of the local Iraqi Red Crescent Society branch, Jassim al-Jubouri, in Tikrit was abducted by gunmen on Monday night.

Another US soldier has been killed in a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the US military said in a statement on Wednesday.

The bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons and a grandson were exhumed and reburied near the hanged leader’s grave in Ouja, his hometown north of Baghdad. Tribal officials said they decided to move the remains of Saddam’s sons Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, and his 14-year-old grandson Mustafa - who were killed by US troops on July 22, 2003, in Mosul - to keep all members of the family in one place. agencies

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