"At least 104 US soldiers died in Iraq in April, capping the deadliest six-month period for US forces since the war began more than four years ago", the May 1 Sydney Morning Herald reported, adding that April was "the deadliest month so far this year and the sixth deadliest of the war. It also brought to five the number of consecutive months when the American death toll has surpassed 80, the longest such stretch of the war."
As of May 1, total US troop deaths in Iraq since the US-British-Australian invasion on March 19, 2003, was 3351. This figure does not include the death toll for US private military contractors.
Associated Press reported in February that "by the end of 2006, the [US] Labor Department had quietly recorded 769 deaths" of US employees working in Iraq for the Pentagon's private contractors. AP noted that the US military "has outsourced so many" support and security duties "that there are almost as many contractors (120,000) as US troops (135,000) in the war zone".
Since then, an extra 28,000 US troops have been committed to the Iraq war, with most being deployed to Baghdad. On May 2, the US military announced that its build-up of forces in Iraq under President George Bush's troop "surge" plan was nearly complete. AP reported that Pentagon officials said that by next month the total number of US military personnel in Iraq will be 160,000.
"Of the Americans killed in April", the SMH reported, "the greatest number, 55, died in Baghdad. Twenty-two died in Anbar and 17 in Diyala province, according to Iraq Casualty Count, whose website can be found at <http://www.icasualties.org>. In March, when the death toll was 81, 37 died in Baghdad."
On May 1, the US Army Times newspaper reported that "Iraqi insurgents are launching four times as many attacks with improvised explosive devices than in 2003". However, due to countermeasures, "only one in five IED attacks kills or injures US troops", Pentagon spokesperson Christine Devries said. While she did not provide casualty figures, Davies said that one in nine US soldiers injured by an IED attack dies.
According to the last quarterly Pentagon report to the US Congress, released in March, 70% of insurgent attacks in Iraq are directed against US and allied foreign forces, 20% target Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces and 10% are directed against civilians.
On May 1, AP reported that "while American casualties are rising, US officials say the Baghdad [security] crackdown has reduced civilian deaths in the capital since the security operation was launched February 14". However, in a 30-page report released on April 25, the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq complained that such claims could not be verified because the US-backed government of PM Nuri al Maliki had instructed the health ministry not to provide UNAMI with any figures on the number of Iraqi casualties.
During a Baghdad press conference at which she released the report, UNAMI human rights officer Ivana Vuco said government officials had not provided an "official" reason for refusing to release the figures, but she added: "Unofficially, however, in a number of follow-up meetings to their decision, we were told that there were concerns that the people would construe the figures to portray the situation negatively and that would further undermine their efforts to establish some kind of security and stability in the country."
UNAMI spokesperson Said Arikat said that Maliki had complained in January that the UN's death count was exaggerated, after UNAMI released a report showing that 34,452 Iraqi civilians had been killed last year. But Arikat insisted the UN count was based on "the most carefully screened figures", being based on information from the Iraqi health ministry, hospitals across the country and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.
A key part of the US military's "security operation" in Baghdad is physically isolating at least 10 of the city's predominantly Sunni Muslim districts by turning them into what US officials call "gated communities". This is a term used in the US to refer to expensive neighbourhoods situated mainly in US resort towns where residents are absent a good part of the year.
Under cover of darkness on April 10, US troops began constructing a 5-kilometre long, 3.6-metre high concrete wall around the predominantly Sunni district of Adhamiyah, which was previously inhabited by about 400,000 people.
Despite angry protests by the district's residents, and an "order" by Maliki for a halt to its construction, the US military announced on May 1 that the building of the concrete "security barrier" had been completed.
"I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop", Maliki said during a joint news conference in Cairo on April 22 with the Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa. The next day, US military officials in Baghdad said that Maliki had previously approved the building of the wall.
Earlier on April 22 the Sunni-based Iraqi Islamic Party, which with its allies has 44 MPs in the 275-member Iraqi parliament and is part of Maliki's "national unity" government, had denounced the wall's construction, issuing a statement declaring: "Isolating parts of Baghdad with barbed wire and concrete barriers will inflict social and economic damage and it will lead to more sectarian tension ... Dividing the capital of Iraq in this way will be the starting point for dividing Iraq at the pretext of imposing law and security."
AP reported that on April 21 "many residents were alarmed" by the wall's construction and said they had not been consulted about it. "This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah", Ahmed al Dulaimi, an engineer who lives in the area, told AP.
According to a survey conducted by the district's local government on April 22, 90% of respondents were strongly opposed to the wall.
The April 23 Washington Post reported that in the walled-off districts, 'troops armed with biometric scanning devices will compile a neighborhood census by recording residents' fingerprints and eye patterns and will perhaps issue them special badges, [US] military officials said".
While US officials claim the ghettoisation plan is aimed at protecting Sunni communities from "Shiite death squads", the April 24 British Independent reported that Baghdad's Sunnis view it "as being primarily directed against insurgents, just as the French army walled off the Casbah in Algiers during the Algerian war in the 1950s and early 1960s to prevent anti-French fighters moving through the city ...
"There seems little doubt that Sunnis in districts of Baghdad being isolated by the walls do not see them as designed for their own protection. Banners carried by demonstrators yesterday proclaimed, 'Separation is a big prison for Adhamiyah citizens' and 'Children in al Adhamiyah want a Baghdad without walls'."
Muhammad al Wardi, a protesting Shiite resident in the neighbouring predominantly Shiite district of Kadhimiyah, accused the Iraqi media of ignoring protest demonstrations in the district against the wall. "We reject surrounding our brothers, the Iraqis in Adhamiyah, and I blame you for not saying anything about our demonstrations in Kadhmiyah and Sadr City neighbourhood", Wardi told Iraqi and foreign journalists, China's Xinhua news agency reported on April 28.
The previous day, a US Army spokesperson said construction of the wall would continue. Maliki has said nothing since about the matter.
The protests in Kadhmiyah and Sadr City, Baghdad's 2.5-million-strong Shiite slum district, were organised by supporters of anti-occupation Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr. A Sadr spokesperson issued a statement on April 21 declaring: "The Sadr movement considers building a wall around Adhamiyah as a way to lay siege to the Iraqi people and to separate them into [sectarian] cantons ... This step is the first step toward dividing the city into cantons and blockading the people there. Today it happens in Adhamiyah, tomorrow it will happen in Sadr City."
The May 3 Independent reported that "Adhamiyah residents complained that on Monday Iraqi troops backed up by US forces took over the Naaman hospital, the only one used by Sunnis in the east of the city. Dr Ahmad Mahmoud was quoted as saying that patients were expelled and snipers posted on the roof of the hospital."
Despite the brutal US "security crackdown" on Baghdad's 6 million residents, Iraqi resistance fighters are continuing to launch mortar and rocket attacks into the heavily fortified US military command centre in Baghdad. AP reported on May 1 that "mortar rounds crashed into the US-controlled Green Zone, the second such barrage in a 12-hour span ... One of the mortars hit within 100 metres of Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki's office, an Iraqi official said."