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U.S. Troops Raid Shiite Areas of Baghdad

Feb-14-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

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By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and DAMIEN CAVE

Thousands of American troops in armored Stryker vehicles swarmed through three mostly Shiite neighborhoods of northeastern Baghdad today.

The operation met with little resistance, but considerable skepticism from some Iraqis, who worried that the American presence would soon melt away again, leaving ruthless violence in its place.

Military commanders described the push into the neighborhoods of Shaab, Bayda and Ur, on the northern edge of Sadr City, as the first major sweep of the new security plan for Baghdad. Coming one day after the top Iraqi general claimed broad powers to search homes, detain residents and evict them from their homes, the operation was the largest of several that signaled an escalation of American and Iraqi efforts to pacify the capital.

Col. Steve Townsend, commander of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, said that the timetable for the operation had been pushed forward a day at the request of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal Al-Maliki. The prime minister has endured blistering criticism over what some Shiite officials have called dangerous delays in setting the plan in motion. Today he declared that the long-awaited “surge” had finally begun.

“We’ve started a new phase today, the phase of building the state on the basis of two ideas,” Mr. Maliki said at a news conference in the southern city of Karbala. Those two ideas, he said, are “the basis of reconciliation — to include all those who want to support the country — and the basis of striking hard at those who want to rebel.”

Across Baghdad in the southeastern Dora neighborhood, two air strikes killed 15 suspected insurgents today as they defended a building and tried to set roadside bombs, the United States military said in a statement.[...]


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