IEDs Disappearing Month By Month By Month
NYT:
BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 — An American military official on Thursday reported a sharp decrease in the number of roadside bombs and other homemade explosive devices in Iraq. The official, Maj. Gen. James E. Simmons, said Iran, which American officials contend is the source of the deadliest of those weapons, appeared to be abiding by a reported commitment to halt their flow into Iraq.
General Simmons said 1,560 improvised explosive devices directed at international forces or Iraqis across the country were identified in October, down after a steady monthly decline from 3,239 in March. Half of the bombs recorded for October were found before they detonated and were cleared, but the other half exploded.
“We have found weapons that we believe are associated with Iran in some of the caches that we have picked up,” said General Simmons, deputy commanding general of the Multinational Corps-Iraq. “But most of these weapons appear to have been in Iraq for months, so we have not seen any recent evidence that weapons continue to come across the border into Iraq.”
He added, “We believe that the initiatives and the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up.”
Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Iran had given assurances to the Iraqi government that it would stem the flow of the explosively formed penetrators, the most deadly form of roadside bombs, across the border. However, Iran has consistently denied sending such weapons into Iraq and has challenged previous claims by the United States military that it did so.
General Simmons said the number of attacks using improvised explosive devices had declined in all areas, but he conceded that 1,560 was still a “significant number,” comparable with the level of attacks in September 2005.
He said most such attacks were now in northern Iraq. There have been indications that Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners, has shifted some of its activities out of Baghdad and Anbar Province, where they have been challenged by American and Iraqi security forces and the “Awakening” movement of Sunni tribes.
He said the attacks involving improvised explosive devices were mainly carried out by elements of the insurgent group and criminal groups formerly associated with the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia affiliated with the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. According to an American explosives expert based in northern Iraq, explosively formed penetrators were “predominantly” weapons used by Shiite militias, whereas Sunni groups tend to rely on buried roadside bombs and land mines. General Simmons declined to give a breakdown of the attacks in the northern belt, from Taji to Mosul.
“The fighting in Al Anbar and the success in Baghdad has forced these terrorists out of those areas and into that battle space, and they take their preferred method of killing people with them whenever they are pushed into other areas of Iraq,” he said.
In Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber on Thursday killed six people when he rammed his vehicle into a police convoy. The police said that the dead included three schoolchildren and that the person who seemed to be the target, Gen. Khattab Abdullah Aref, a senior policeman who has led the fight against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in the area, was seriously wounded.
One American soldier was killed and four were wounded by an explosion on Wednesday in Diyala Province north of Baghdad, the American military said Thursday. Six bodies were found in Baghdad on Thursday, Iraqi police officials said.
In Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, the American ambassador, said he hoped the Iraqi Parliament would soon pass a draft law to overhaul the rules that had blocked many Sunni officials once affiliated with Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party from securing government jobs. The draft was presented to Parliament by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government on Wednesday.
Security operations in Baghdad had been “very successful in bringing down levels of violence, so it is now extremely important that the political process move forward in conditions of better security to afford Iraqis the chance to build a strong and stable nation,” Mr. Crocker told Reuters.
Just another example of the Progress Being Made In Iraq…will someone please forward this to Harry Reid???:grin:
November 16th, 2007 at 4:30 am