U.S. generals say violence curbed in Baghdad

A spokesman for Defense Minister Arturo Parisi in Rome declined to say whether the Italians were withdrawing completely next month or merely handing over some of their authority.

Italy has about 1,600 troops in the country, mostly in Nasiriyah, and that force is expected to be withdrawn by year’s end.

Al-Maliki has said his national unity government plans to gradually take over security for all of Iraq’s provinces within the next 18 months.

America’s overall strategy calls for U.S. and international forces to gradually hand over security control for specific regions and redeploy to larger bases. Those bases can act in a support or reserve role. A final future stage would involve the drawdown of troops from those bases.

British troops on Thursday pulled out of a base in southern Iraq that had come under frequent attack, and planned to reposition their forces along the area bordering Iran to crack down on smuggling.

Camp Abu Naji in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, was turned over to Iraqi authorities, Maj. Charlie Burbridge, a spokesman for British forces, said from Basra. The camp in Maysan province, which had housed about 1,200 troops, had been frequently targeted by militants over the past three years.

2 U.S. soldiers killed
In violence around Iraq, two U.S. soldiers were killed, one in a roadside explosion south of Baghdad and the other after gunmen attacked his patrol with small arms fire, the U.S. military said.

On Wednesday, another American soldier died in fighting south of Baghdad in a raid to capture “foreign terrorists,” the U.S. military command said.

In Baghdad’s eastern neighborhood of Mashtal, a suspected suicide car bomb killed at least two people and wounded nine, police said. A bomb inside a parked car exploded in the capital’s Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, killing two civilians and injuring four, while another car bomb exploded in Baghdad’s Zeyouna neighborhood, wounding five policemen, police said.

In other attacks, according to Iraqi security forces:

• Three Iraqi soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Buhriz, 35 miles north of Baghdad.
• In Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, a bomb in a minivan killed three policemen.
• A police officer was killed and four others were wounded by a roadside bomb in Jirf al-Melih, south of Baqouba.
• In Baghdad’s Azamiyah district, a policeman was killed and another was wounded when gunmen opened fire on their patrol.
• Gunmen shot and killed the mother and brother of the owner of a clothing store in Baghdad’s southern Dora neighborhood in a drive-by shooting. The owner was wounded.
• In northern Mosul, two civilians were killed in a drive-by shooting.

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