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Report Shows Increase in Iraq Violence Since January    [

    Iraq Violence Sees Spike
    By Ryan Lenz
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 12 March 2008

    Baghdad - Violence appeared to be on the rise in Iraq after a day that saw at least 42 people die - numbers that cast doubt on the easing of sectarian violence following a surge of U.S. forces to the country last year.

    An Iraqi official confirmed the grisliest attack of Tuesday when 16 passengers on a bus in southern Iraq were killed by a roadside bomb. The U.S. military, however, claimed no one died in the attack, which was targeting a passing military convoy. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

    Dr. Hadi Badr al-Riyahi, head of the Nasiriyah provincial health directorate, confirmed Wednesday that the attack on the bus traveling from Najaf to Basra killed 16 civilians and wounded 20.

    At the time, a local policeman and the assistant bus driver also said 16 people were killed.

    But Maj. Brad Leighton, a military spokesman in Baghdad, disputed that claim on Wednesday, telling The Associated Press that only one coalition soldier and one Iraqi civilian were wounded in the attack about 50 miles from Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.

    At least 26 people were killed Tuesday in other violence around the country.

    The spike comes in the wake of a 60 percent drop in attacks across the country since June, according to U.S. military figures.

    According to an Associated Press count, at the height of unrest from November 2006 to August 2007, on average approximately 65 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence. As conditions improved, the daily death toll steadily declined. It reached its lowest point in more than two years in January, when on average 20 Iraqis died each day.

    Those numbers have since jumped. In February, approximately 26 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence, and so far in March, that number is up to 39 daily. These figures reflect the months in which people were found, and not necessarily - as in the case of mass graves - the months in which they were killed.

    Last Thursday, two massive bombs killed 68 people in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood, while on March 3, two car bombs killed 24 people in the capital.

    Military spokesman Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said Sunday that recent violence should not be taken as evidence of "an increase or a trend of an increase."

    "I think we need to continue to look at historically what has happened over the last year to really put in perspective a one-week or two-weeks' worth of activity inside Baghdad," Smith said.

    An American soldier died Tuesday after his patrol was hit by a roadside bomb near Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, a day after eight soldiers died in a pair of bomb attacks marking the heaviest single day of U.S. casualties since September.

    On Wednesday, two Iraqi civilians were killed and 10 others wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a passing U.S. military patrol, local police said. There were no reports of American casualties.

 

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    Report Shows Increase in Iraq Violence Since January
    By David Morgan
    Reuters

    Wednesday 12 March 2008

    Washington - Iraq has seen some increased violence since January, including suicide and car bombings, despite a sharp overall decline in attacks in the past eight months, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

    The rise in violence was partly as a result of recent U.S.-led offensives against Islamist militants, including al Qaeda in Iraq, the Defense Department said in its latest quarterly report on the war.

    The release of the report, which covers December through February, coincided with a surge of violence that killed 46 people across Iraq on Tuesday.

    The Pentagon noted a rise in security incidents since January in Nineveh and Diyala provinces and other areas where it said al Qaeda in Iraq militants have flocked since being driven from former strongholds by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen.

    The report called the increased violence a "short term" result of military operations against insurgents that began in January.

    Defense officials could not say how closely the violence sparked by the offensives was related to a rise in large bombings that are aimed at causing many deaths, described as "high-profile attacks."

    "In January 2008, high-profile attacks rose for the first time in five months as a result of a slight increase in person-borne IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and a slight increase in vehicle-borne IED's," the report said.

    Charts of attack data in the report showed the increase in such bombings extending into February with a small rise in civilian deaths for the same period.

    No figures accompanied the charts, and many of the comparisons in the report were given in percentages rather than figures.

    Surge Strategy

    However, in assessing the overall trend of the war, the report echoed the Bush administration's stance that a U.S. troop increase that started last year has paid dividends by broadly dampening much of the violence in Iraq. Critics of the war opposed the troop increase.

    Since June, when the last combat brigade in President George W. Bush's so-called surge strategy arrived in Iraq, deaths from sectarian violence have fallen 90 percent, the report said.

    Total civilian deaths were down more than 70 percent over the same period, the report said, giving only percentages and not actual figures.

    "Key indicators are at levels last seen consistently in mid-2005, with indirect fire attacks at levels not seen since early 2004," the report said.

    The recent violence underscores the fragility of the relative calm that has taken hold in Iraq, as the Bush administration moves to withdraw its extra combat forces by mid-summer.

    There are now 162,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, but the number is expected to fall to about 140,000 by the end of July.

    Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is widely expected to recommend a pause in the troop drawdowns when he testifies to Congress next month.

    U.S. officials say attacks have dropped more than 60 percent because of the U.S. force surge, the emergence of Sunnis allied with the United States against al Qaeda, improvements in the Iraqi army and a cease-fire declaration by radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

    But on Tuesday, members of Sadr's militia fought U.S. special forces and Iraqi security forces backed by U.S. warplanes in clashes in which 14 people died.

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    Editing by Andrew Gray and Frances Kerry.

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