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Safer Iraqi cities as troops withdraw: US commander
Baghdad (AFP) March 15, 2009 The US military's pullout from Iraqi cities in June will improve urban security as American troops refocus on catching insurgents in the countryside, a senior US official said Sunday. "The repositioning to peripheral locations in the city will improve security outside and in the city centres by choking off supply chains fuelling terrorism," Baghdad's deputy US commander Brigadier General Frederick Rudesheim told a media conference. Under a US-Iraqi security agreement signed in November, US troops are to pull out of towns and cities by June 30 and from the whole country by the end of 2011. Rudesheim said a handful of soldiers will remain behind in the cities to support the Iraqi operations. In the capital that figure is not expected to surpass 10 percent of current troop levels. About 140,000 US troops are currently deployed in Iraq -- down from a peak of more than 160,000 during the 2007 "surge" offensive against insurgents and Al-Qaeda. That year, 17,430 Iraqis died in violence. US President Obama has ordered an end to US combat in Iraq by August 31 next year but said 50,000 US troops would remain under a new mission until the end of 2011. Despite the piecemeal withdrawal from the cities, US troops will still carry out urban combat operations in coordination with Iraqi forces, said Rudesheim. "We will have combat operations in the city but they just will not emanate from the cities. There is no cessation of combat operations," he added. The US military describes Al-Qaeda in Iraq as severely weakened but still capable of mounting bloody attacks. Last week two separate bombings in the Baghdad area killed more than 60 people in all, raising security fears and prompting calls by senior Iraqi politicians for a comprehensive security review. "The attacks in the past days represent a serious deterioration in the security file and there must be a review of this issue," vice president Tareq al-Hashemi said in a statement released Thursday. Rudesheim added that investigations into the March 8 attack on a Baghdad police academy and the suicide blast at a tribal meeting had yet to draw any definitive conclusions, although Al-Qaeda was strongly suspected. "Unfortunately, we know we will have other days like that even though coalition and Iraqi security forces are working diligently to respond to them." Share This Article With Planet Earth
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