U.S. Troops Lock Down Much of East Baghdad (NYT)

[Eugene]

U.S. Troops Lock Down Much of East Baghdad

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAMIEN CAVE
Published: February 11, 2007

BAGHDAD, Feb. 11 — American troops locked down a large industrialized area of eastern
Baghdad all day on Sunday while Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, without
indicating how he would do it, vowed to speed the deployment of Iraqi forces throughout
the war-ravaged capital.

American commanders described the operation on Sunday in the Rusafa district as an
early taste of large-scale sweeps expected to come in eastern Baghdad to take back some
measure of control from militias. Troops from the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team,
of Ft. Lewis, Wash., were fired on by insurgents with automatic rifles but detained 10
Iraqis while searching for a car-bomb manufacturing site in the area, on a violent
sectarian fault line between a Shiite enclave and the bleak and insurgent-ridden Sunni
neighborhood of Fadhil.

The looming operations in eastern Baghdad are a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s
new security plan that adds 21,000 combat troops to Iraq, a move viewed by some as a
last-ditch effort to save the country from full-scale civil war. Eastern Baghdad “is a
focal point for us right now,” said Brig. Gen. John Campbell, deputy commander of the
American-led troops in Baghdad. The American-led forces say they have conducted 3,400
patrols and detained 140 suspects in the past week.

Under immense pressure from his Shiite backers, who say their neighborhoods are becoming
increasingly vulnerable to attacks by Sunni insurgents, Mr. Maliki announced Sunday that
he had ordered the deployment of Iraqi soldiers and the police accelerated so they can
surround and search areas considered sanctuaries for insurgents and militias. “It will
not start in just one area, but in all areas at the same time,” he said.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-iraq.html?ref=world