Baghdad: Attacks by insurgents and rival sectarian militias have fallen up to 80 per cent in Baghdad and concrete blast walls that divide the capital can soon be removed, a senior Iraqi military official said on Saturday.
Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar said the success of a year-long clampdown named 'Operation Imposing Law' had reined in the savage violence between majority Shiites and minority Sunnis.
"In a time when you could hear nothing but explosions, gunfire and the screams of mothers and fathers and sons, and see bodies that were burned and dismembered, the people of Baghdad were awaiting Operation Imposing Law," Qanbar told reporters.
He pointed to the number of bodies turning up on the capital's streets as an indicator of its success.
In the six weeks to the end of 2006, 43 bodies were found dumped in the city each day as fierce sectarian fighting threatened to turn into full scale civil war.
The figure fell to just four a day in 2008, in the period up to February 12, said Qanbar who headed the plan launched by Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki.
"Various enemy activities" had also fallen by between 75 and 80 per cent since the security plan was implemented, he said. Central to the success of the plan has been the erection of 12 feet concrete walls that snake across vast swathes of the city.
The walls were designed to stop car bombings blamed on Al Qaida that turned markets and open areas into killing fields.
