More Troops to Be Deployed in Baghdad, General Says
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, July 21 — The top American commander for the Middle East said Friday that the escalating sectarian violence in Baghdad had become a greater worry than the insurgency and that plans were being drawn up to move additional forces to the Iraqi capital.
“The situation with sectarian violence in Baghdad is very serious,” Gen. John P. Abizaid of the Army, the head of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Friday. “The country can deal with the insurgency better than it can with the sectarian violence, and it needs to move decisively against the sectarian violence now.”
The new Iraqi government announced last month that it was stepping up security efforts in Baghdad. The killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant who led Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, also prompted hopes that the tide of violence might subside.
But an intensifying cycle of sectarian attacks and revenge killings by Sunni and Shiite groups have engulfed the city. Many residents have been fleeing the capital. Two months after the new Iraq government took office, the security gains that “we had hoped for have not been achieved,” General Abizaid acknowledged.
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