August in Baghdad Ends With Flurry of Violence

The number of killings in Iraq’s capital escalated last week despite an American-led crackdown, with morgue workers receiving as many bodies as they had during the first three weeks of August.

At least 334 people, including 23 women, were slain in Baghdad between Aug. 27 and Sept. 2, according to morgue figures provided by Health Ministry officials. Most of the victims had been kidnapped, tortured, tied and shot.

During that week, at least 394 other people were killed around Iraq in other violence, including bombings, mortar attacks and gunfights, Iraqi authorities said.

The increase in violence followed an announcement by U.S. and Iraqi officials at the beginning of last week that the number of killings in the capital had decreased dramatically in August from more than 1,800 in July. Although August as a whole was less violent than July, last week’s killings suggested that death squads were still able to move about Baghdad despite checkpoints and curfews.

On Monday, the mutilated, handcuffed and blindfolded bodies of 33 men were found in various Baghdad neighborhoods, authorities said.

The U.S. military announced Monday that four more American troops had been killed and a fifth had died of noncombat injures. Two British soldiers were killed as their convoy, which was escorting a reconstruction team, hit a roadside bomb in the southern city of Basra, said British military spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge.

A member of the Iraqi Olympic soccer team was kidnapped near a mosque in western Baghdad, according to police and Hussein Gitan, a former teammate. Ghanem Khudhair Hussein, 25, was about to leave Iraq to play for a Syrian team.

A child died in a shootout between American soldiers and insurgents holed up in Muqdadiya, the U.S. military said in a statement Monday. U.S.-led forces raiding a house of a suspected insurgent financier came under fire and shot back, killing two suspected insurgents and the child.

As part of the security crackdown in Baghdad, about 11,000 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers were deployed to reinforce troops there. In the last few weeks, soldiers have cordoned off some neighborhoods and conducted round-the-clock patrols.

“We have seen progress, and a degree of success, in the neighborhoods we’re in,” said U.S. military spokesman Army Lt. Col. Barry Johnson. “This is going to be ebb and flow.”

In Adhamiya, a northeastern Baghdad neighborhood, American troops recently watched the ebb and flow firsthand. Bodies were being dumped by the dozens each week in the Sunni Arab neighborhood. So many corpses were found on one particular street, residents nicknamed it the Street of Death. When American soldiers arrived in Stryker vehicles as part of the security crackdown, the bodies stopped appearing.

The Strykers left three days ago. On Monday, soldiers found their first body since then on the Street of Death -- a teenager shot in the side of his head.

“We can’t stop the killings and the kidnappings,” said Capt. Michael Baka, from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment. “All we can do is to prevent as many as we can.”

As part of the security sweeps in Baghdad, American and Iraqi troops have searched 45,800 buildings, including 49 mosques, according to a U.S. military statement. They have detained 75 terrorist suspects and confiscated at least 1,000 weapons and found 26 weapons caches, the military said.

In the past, Americans have turned over control of certain areas to Iraqis only to see violence flare up once they leave.

Iraqi forces “lack training and weapons,” said a high-ranking Iraqi army officer, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The terrorists have more powerful weapons.”

He added that the Iraqi army “can’t accomplish all the missions but depends on the multinational forces to do most of the tasks.”

Over the weekend, meanwhile, the U.S. military postponed plans to formally transfer control of Iraq’s armed forces to the Iraqi government.

The event was supposed to mark another step toward Iraqi control and eventual drawdown of U.S. forces. Instead, the ceremony has been repeatedly postponed. Iraqi and U.S. officials described the delays as merely technical and bureaucratic, adding that the two sides were trying to finalize a written agreement that would cover the new relationship between their forces.

On Monday, Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said the parties were expected to sign the agreement this week.

“It will allow Iraqi forces to control where they are and have full sovereignty,” he said. But he added: “It will be optional to ask for assistance, and definitely they’ll need assistance.”

Half of Iraq’s 10 army divisions either are in charge of their own territories or in the process of taking over authority from the U.S.-led coalition. The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., last week said Iraqi security forces would be able to assume overall control of their nation’s security within 12 to 18 months “with very little coalition support.”

A recent Pentagon report to Congress says most Iraqi battalions still require support from U.S.-led forces “because their logistics, sustainment, and command and control capabilities are not fully developed.”

The Iraqi army employs about 115,000 soldiers. However, the report notes a lack of junior leadership, problems of absenteeism and sectarian and ethnic divides, with Sunni Arab, Shiite Muslim or Kurdish soldiers “mostly serving in units located in geographic areas familiar to their group.”

“These divisions are even stronger at the battalion level, where battalion commanders of one particular group tend to command only soldiers of their own sectarian or regional backgrounds,” the report says. Observers fear that those battalions will turn on one another in a civil war, using weapons and vehicles paid for by the U.S.

*

louise.roug@latimes.com

Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell and Saif Hameed contributed to this report.