BAGHDAD - The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq said Thursday that a seven-month-old security operation has cut violence in Baghdad by half.
On Thursday, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told reporters that car bombs and suicide attacks in Baghdad have fallen to their lowest level in a year, and civilian casualties have dropped from a high of about 32 to 12 per day.
Al-Qaida in Iraq was increasingly being pushed out of Baghdad, seeking refuge outside the capital and even fleeing Iraq, Odierno said.
Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi military commander, said that before the troop buildup, one-third of Baghdads 507 districts were under insurgent control.
Now, only five to six districts can be called hot areas, he said. Al-Qaida now is left only with ****y-trapped cars and roadside bombs as their only weapons, which cannot be called quality operations, and they do not worry us.
What we do know is that there has been a decline in civilian casualties, but I would say again that its not at the level we want it to be, Odierno said. There are still way too many civilian casualties inside of Baghdad and Iraq.
Meanwhile, an Iranian officer who was smuggling powerful roadside bombs into Iraq was arrested Thursday, the military said. The terrorista member of the Quds Force, an elite unit of Irans Revolutionary Guardswas captured in a hotel in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, the military said.
He was involved in transporting roadside bombs, including armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, into Iraq, according to a statement. It said intelligence reports also indicated he was involved in the infiltration and training of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Officials have said the Bush administration is expected to blacklist the Quds force as a terrorist organization, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said seven Shiite extremists were detained following a pre-dawn raid by Iraqi special forces and U.S. troops in Sadr City.
the AP contributed to this report
http://patdollard.com/2007/09/20/al-...ce-plummeting/