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Security operation appears ready, 38 more civilains killed by bombers and gunmen
Sameer N. Yacoub, Associated Press
Issue date: 2/7/07 Section: News
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Violence raked Baghdad Monday as an Iraqi general took charge of the security operation in the capital and Iraqi police and soldiers manned new roadblocks _ initial steps indicating the start of the long-anticipated joint operation with American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed.
At least 38 people died in bomb and mortar attacks across the city Monday, 15 of them as they waited to buy gasoline when two car bombs blew up in quick succession in south Baghdad. Seven people died after nightfall when four mortar shells rained down on a Shiite neighborhood in south Baghdad.
The violence was a sign of the difficulty facing the push that eventually will be able to call upon on as many as 90,000 American and Iraqi troops and police in a third attempt to calm the capital in nine months. The command center, staffed by Iraqis and Americans, opened Monday inside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone next to the prime minister's office.
"It's going to be much more than this city has ever seen and it's going to be a rolling surge," Col. Douglass Heckman, the senior adviser to the 9th Iraqi Army Division, said Sunday.
Two past security operations in the capital over the past nine months _ Operations Together Forward I and II _ have failed and the United States blamed Iraqi authorities for failing to produce the number of troops promised.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week that Iraqi troops who arrived to augment the newly assembled Baghdad force were only at about half the number promised.
A spokesman for the Sadr Movement, an important Shiite bloc in parliament, complained that the security crackdown had been too long in coming, especially given the series of bombings that have devastated mainly Shiite marketplaces over the past weeks.
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