Civilian deaths and car bombs have fallen sharply in Baghdad since a US-backed crackdown began a month ago, but attacks outside the capital were rising as militants change tactics, Iraqi officials said today.
In an upbeat assessment of the first 30 days of the security plan, Iraqi military spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi said the number of Iraqis killed by violence in Baghdad since February 14th was 265, down from 1,440 killed in the previous month.
The number of car bombings, a favourite weapon used by suspected Sunni Arab militants fighting the Shia-led government, was down to 36 from 56.
But as thousands of US and Iraqi troops flow into the capital, attacks in the area surrounding Baghdad have increased, Mr Moussawi said, without providing specific figures.
US commanders had predicted the plan, regarded as the last chance to avert an all-out civil war, would bring a temporary dip in violence in Baghdad. They also had anticipated that insurgents would be driven out into areas such as Anbar and northeastern Diyala province.
There are about 100,000 Iraqi and US forces deployed in Baghdad under a plan to sweep neighbourhoods and rid streets of Sunni Arab militants and Shia militias. US President George W. Bush is sending an additional 26,000 US troops, mostly to boost the Baghdad plan.
The US military says the Mehdi Army Shia militia is the greatest threat to security in Iraq and has conducted sweeps in the Shia militia stronghold of Sadr City.
So far Shia militias have been lying low and many of their leading figures are believed to have fled the capital, a development that has coincided with a decline in execution-style killings.
But violence has been on the rise elsewhere, including in western Anbar province, a Sunni militant stronghold where al-Qaeda and local tribes are engaged in a power struggle, and in Diyala, a religiously mixed area northeast of the capital.
The US military has sent a battalion of 700 troops with Stryker armoured vehicles to Diyala, which has witnessed some of the worst violence between majority Shias and Sunnis.
A bomb exploded today in a market south of the northern city of Kirkuk, killing two people and wounding 10, police said.