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More than 8,000 Iraqis killed in insurgent attacks
Spokesman: Reliance on car bombs a 'distinctive shift'

Thursday, June 30, 2005; Posted: 4:09 p.m. EDT (20:09 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/30/iraq.main/index.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Insurgent attacks in the last six months have
killed more than 8,000 Iraqi civilians, police and troops, according to
Iraq's interior minister.

Meanwhile Thursday, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the
insurgency's reliance on car bombs is due to their "high payoffs."

In an interview with CNN, Iraqi Interior Minister Baqir Jabbur said
"terrorists" had killed 8,175 people and wounded another 12,000 since
January 2005.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there have been 307 U.S.
fatalities in combat during the same period.

Jabbur said he was optimistic about the recent strides made by Iraqi
security forces and predicted victory in the war against insurgents.

"We have a plan, and I think we need some months and we can get results
... We are surrounding the insurgency," he said.

Unofficial estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths during the Iraq war range
from about 22,000 -- according to the Web site iraqbodycount.net -- to
about 100,000 -- from an independent survey reported in The Washington
Post. The Pentagon does not give numbers for civilian deaths in Iraq.

Jabbur said he believed the United States has enough troops deployed in
Iraq. He said Wednesday the focus needed to remain on the training of
more Iraqi troops and police.

Jabbur said the Iraqi-led counterinsurgency operation dubbed "Operation
Lightning" has so far yielded 1,500 arrests of suspected insurgents
around Baghdad. Of those, 500 have been released, Interior Ministry
officials said.

He said Iraqi and American troops were poised to start a second phase
of the operation, extending the reach of the campaign to a 60-kilometer
(38-mile) radius around Baghdad.

Jabbur's office is in charge of Iraq's police force, which he said now
numbers about 67,000.

The ministry hopes to recruit a total of 200,000, but financial
restraints are complicating efforts to outfit them with weapons and equipment,
he said.
Political progress

On Thursday, U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Alston said he believed
fighters remained a potent, adaptive force and the lethal car bombings
that have plagued Baghdad and other places in recent weeks, "will
continue in Iraq for a period of time."

He estimated the number of insurgents as "between 15,000 and 20,000 at
large, with a lot of that being folks who don't choose to fight every
day." He estimated a core group to number in the hundreds.

Their main targets are Iraqi security forces and civilians, he said.

Alston said that in its first year of sovereignty, Iraq has made
political progress and strides in developing security forces. But he noted
that those forces had to be built "from scratch."

"We found an insurgency that was aggressive in several cities, frankly
culminating in Falluja back in November," he said, referring to the
U.S.-led offensive in November that destroyed the insurgency haven in the
Anbar city.

"At that time, the attack levels were in the 900s per week. There was
some ability of the insurgency and the terrorists to surge for the
elections because of just how much that loss was going to mean to them.

"We have seen nothing like those levels of attacks to date since that
time frame. So I think that the ability of the enemy to sustain
high-volume attacks is just something that we haven't seen them to be able to
reconstitute."

Alston noted the insurgents' reliance on a car bombing strategy lately,
what he calls a "distinctive shift." That began when the new
transitional government was announced at the end of May.

"We have seen this spring a move toward car bombs because of the high
payoffs," said Alston.

Alston also pointed out that the insurgents "don't score every time
they employ" a car bombing or a suicide car bombing, noting efficient
procedures to interdict such strikes, detaining suspected bomb makers, and
poor bomb-production quality.