Baghdad to be ringed with trenches
9/16/2006 - 3:36:56
Source ::: AFP
Baghdad • Iraq said yesterday that it will ring Baghdad with trenches in a bid to restrict movements of insurgents, as more than 100 people were reported killed in sectarian attacks in the past three days.
The new security measures were spelled out yesterday by Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf. “We will surround the city with trenches,” Khalaf said. “The entry to the capital will be permitted through 28 roads as against 21 at the moment, but at the same time we will seal off dozens of other minor roads with access to Baghdad.”
He said checkpoints will be set up on the 28 roads on which access will be allowed. Another top security official said the plan was to “monitor who is coming into Baghdad and who is going out. This way we will have a better control of movements, including those of insurgents.”
Baghdad has a circumference of 80km and observers noted that an operation of this scale would take months to complete. The latest measure comes after insurgents and death squads continue to kill dozens of people daily despite a massive Iraq and US security plan — Operation Together Forward — in place since mid-June.
More than 30,000 troops are patrolling the capital’s streets to restore stability. The latest bout of communal bloodletting saw more than 100 people killed in the past three days, with their bullet-riddled corpses recovered from the streets, according to officials Friday. Pointing a finger at Shi’ite death squads, Iraq’s top Sunni leader Adnan Al Dulaimi said that “well-known militias” were behind the killings that he warned were propelling the country towards “disaster.”
US and Iraqi security officials said most of the newly recovered corpses were shot dead execution-style, with bullets to their heads and many showing signs of torture. Khalaf said that 51 bodies had been recovered in Baghdad in the past 24 hours.
The US military said one of its soldiers went missing when a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle next to a “hardened structure” west of Baghdad.
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US denies plan for giant trench around Baghdad
(Reuters)
16 September 2006
BAGHDAD - The US military denied reports on Saturday that Iraq plans to dig a giant ring of trenches around the city of Baghdad.
Iraq’s Interior Ministry announced earlier this week that it plans to set up 28 checkpoints that would allow controlled access to the city, while closing off other roads as part of a security crackdown.
The New York Times quoted an Interior Ministry spokesman on Saturday as saying the Iraqis would also dig a giant trench around the city of seven million people.
“We’re going to build a trench around Baghdad so we can control the exits and entrances so people will be searched properly,” Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf told the newspaper. He said the trench would run across farmland and other open areas.
But Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson said the description sounded like an exaggeration of a plan that mostly would rely on existing terrain features to ensure that traffic moved through the 28 checkpoints.
“No doubt there will be some trenches involved in this, but to say there is going to be a moat around the city is a bit of a stretch,” Johnson said.
“They’ve called it a trench around Baghdad. Really what this is, is there’s a series of obstacles that the Iraqi government are planning, and we’re working with them, to ensure movement through checkpoints, to keep terrorists and extremists and criminals from using those (other) routes,” Johnson said.
“So it’s not a trench. It will be a series using the natural terrain that already exists such as canals, and some obstacles.”
Baghdad is 60 miles in circumference and surrounded mostly by farmland. But the land is already crisscrossed by irrigation canals and mostly impassible for cars driving off roads.
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