3,500 US troops set to leave Iraq
BAGHDAD (AP) - May 6, 2008 Washington plans to trim it forces in Iraq to about 140,000
soldiers by the summer - from a peak of about 170,000 in October at
the height of the troop buildup in Baghdad and surrounding areas.
The departing soldiers, part of the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat
Team, will redeploy to Fort Benning, Ga., the military said.
The U.S. sent some 30,000 additional troops into Iraq last year
to help stem growing violence. The troop increase, a truce by a key
Shiite Muslim militia and the rise of Sunni fighters who allied
with the U.S. in the battle against al-Qaida were credited with a
sharp decrease in bloodshed during the last 10 months.
The soldiers are part of the third of five "surge" brigades
scheduled to leave the country. The other two are expected to
return to the U.S. by the end of July. There are currently about
159,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
"The continued drawdown of surge brigades demonstrates
continued progress in Iraq," Brig. Gen. Dan Allyn said in the
statement released late Monday. "After July, commanders will
assess our security posture for about 45 days and determine future
force requirements based on these conditions-based assessments."
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, has pushed
for a so-called "pause" in further redeployment of U.S. troops.
Critics have called for a quicker withdrawal of American
soldiers, but commanders on the ground insist the slowdown is
needed so a sharp increase in violence is not seen when U.S. forces
leave.
Separately, the U.S. military said in a statement Tuesday that a
brothel in northern Iraq was attacked the day before. The Americans
blamed the attack on al-Qaida insurgents, but local police did not
speculate on who carried out the killings.
Iraqi police said the attack in Mosul killed three prostitutes
and wounded two others.
There have been a string of attacks against women deemed immoral
in recent months, including the bombing of hair styling salons and
the frequent murder of women not wearing traditional clothing in
the southern city of Basra.
Meanwhile, at least four civilians were killed overnight in the
Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, hospital officials said
Tuesday. Some 21 people were wounded at the same time in Sadr City,
which has seen fierce fighting between the Mahdi Army militia and
U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Clashes in the sprawling slum of 2.5 million people that serves
as a power base for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his
Mahdi fighters have raged for five weeks, since the Iraqi
government began a crackdown on the militants in southern Iraq.
Hassan al-Rubaie, a Sadrist lawmaker, suspended his seat in
parliament on Tuesday to protest the fighting in Sadr City. He said
he held the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
responsible for the fighting in the slum.
The lawmaker also blamed Iran for interfering with Iraq's
security and said the neighboring nation was causing much of the
violence by supplying money, weapons and training to Iraqi
fighters, a charge U.S. commanders have repeatedly made. Iran
denies the allegations.
Meanwhile, a rocket slammed into Baghdad's municipal building in
the city's center. Seven people were wounded in the attack,
officials said.
Elsewhere in the capital, a mortar hit a college campus,
wounding one person.
U.S. and Iraqi forces raided two police stations and arrested 48
policemen suspected of having links to Shiite militias late Monday
in the Baghdad neighborhood of Shula, a Shiite stronghold, a
policeman said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized
to speak to the media.
Elsewhere, two policemen were killed Monday night in clashes
with unidentified gunmen in Mosul, a provincial policeman said on
condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the
media. Around the same time in eastern Mosul, two gunmen were
killed by police.
North of Baghdad in Tikrit, a car bomb targeting a police patrol
exploded in the central part of the city, killing four people and
wounding eight others, local police said. One policeman was among
the dead.