- The US military surge in Iraq, designed to turn around
the course of the war, appears to be failing as senior US officers admit
they need yet more troops and new figures show a sharp increase in the
victims of death squads in Baghdad.
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- In the first 11 days of this month, there have already
been 234 bodies - men murdered by death squads - dumped around the capital,
a dramatic rise from the 137 found in the same period of April. Improving
security in Baghdad and reducing death-squad activity was described as
one of the key aims of the US surge of 25,000 additional troops, the final
units of whom are due to arrive next month.
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- In a further setback, the US military announced yesterday
the loss of an entire patrol south of Baghdad, with five soldiers dead
and three others missing, after they were ambushed by insurgents in the
town of Mahmoudiya.
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- The new figures emerged as the commander of US forces
in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, admitted he did not have
enough soldiers to contain the escalating violence in Diyala province,
which neighbours Baghdad and has become the focus of the heaviest fighting
between largely Sunni insurgent groups and the US army, which has seen
casualties increase by 300 per cent. Sixty-one US soldiers have been killed
in Diyala this year, compared with 20 in all of last year.
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- Mixon, interviewed by The Observer earlier this year,
has not made a secret of his frustration at the declining situation in
Diyala and has already reinforced the area around Baqouba - the centre
of the heaviest fighting - with additional troops.
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- Ironically, the violence in Diyala has been exacerbated
by an influx of both Shia and Sunni fighters displaced from Baghdad by
the surge and also from Anbar province who have relocated to Diyala to
join a series of jihadi and nationalist groups already based there.
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- Mixon, who was speaking in Tikrit, said: 'I'm going to
need additional forces, to get that situation to a more acceptable level,
so the Iraqi security forces will be able in the future to handle that.'
He was also highly critical of Iraqi government in Baghdad, charging that
it was riddled with corruption.
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- Mixon's request coincided with yet more bad news from
Iraq - a draft US government report claiming that between 100,000 and 300,000
barrels a day of Iraq's declared oil production may have been siphoned
off through corruption in the past four years.
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- Iraqi and American officials have long contended that
oil smuggling from fields controlled by Shia militias in the south is costing
Iraq billions of dollars - funds that, it is feared, are going to armed
groups.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited
2007
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