Iraqi's are breaking into civil war!!! Oh maybe not...
You know I appreciate you taking the time. There's a variety of things I'd like to talk about, and more importantly I'd like to talk about whatever you -- whatsever's on your mind.
But before I go any further, let me pause to congratulate the people of Iraq on a successful election, of which the results are certified this week. Over the next days and weeks, the elected representatives of the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people will form a government, a representative government, that truly meets the rights of all Iraqis. Very important. And you got to applaud the Iraqi citizenship as they've worked over the last year through three successive elections, as they've marched from tyranny to democracy.
I'm going to try to spend some time and put attack trends in perspective. Every Thursday I stand up and I tell you here's how many attacks there were yesterday and here's how many there were last week. And just to continue that trend, there were 67 attacks yesterday; there were 545 attacks within the last week. And that attack trend is, indeed, up; that's 17 percent more attacks than we experienced the week before. And the most significant increase was in Al Anbar Province, and there was a 57 percent increase in the number of attacks that week compared to the week prior.
Now let's -- in a soldier's vernacular, let's back away from the map and look at the bigger picture, and that's why I'd like to show you attack trends over the last six months in the aggregate.
Eighty-five percent of the attacks against the coalition forces, the Iraqi security forces and the people of Iraq take place in four provinces: Al Anbar, Salahuddin, Nineveh and Baghdad. And you can see their attack trend numbers.
On average, 21 attacks per day in Baghdad. There were 29 attacks in Baghdad yesterday.
On average, 22 attacks per day in Al Anbar. Yesterday there were 15.
And in the north, on average, about an aggregate of 29 attacks when you combined the northern provinces.
But 85 percent of the attacks take place in four of the provinces. And if you look at the rest of the provinces, 12 of the provinces average less than one attack per day, and 10 of those provinces almost no attacks.
Wasat, 0.2.
Dhi Qar, 0.2.
Qadisiyah, 0.2.
An Najaf, 0.1.
So the point is, the attacks are indeed taking place, and we continue to average about 70 attacks per day against coalition forces, Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians, but they are isolated attacks -- four provinces where only 40 percent where the population of Iraq live and work.
Operations across Iraq continue.
Last week we conducted 435 company-level operations and above. Thirty-one percent of those operations were independent Iraqi security force operations -- operations they planned and they executed independent of the coalition force members. And I'd like to talk about a couple of those.
In Diyala Province, with the Fifth Iraqi Army Division last week, that battalion commander and his staff had intelligence that in this isolated area where insurgents that were planning to conduct IED attacks; there was an IED-making facility. So they planned this operation. They conducted the operation. As they entered the first house -- the assault team entered the first house -- they immediately came under armed contact with four terrorist, and a gunfire ensued. The assault force left except for one Iraqi army sergeant who stood behind, killed one terrorist, wounded two others, and he left and then he (attracted ?) himself, joined up with his team, they continued the assault. In that assault, they killed two terrorist, they captured 102 terrorist, of which 25 of those terrorist were on the most wanted list of the Iraqi security forces. Fifth Iraqi Army Division, planned and executed at the battalion level, successful operation, detained 102 insurgents. And an Iraqi Army sergeant with strong courage and conviction stood his ground against those armed insurgents.
In north Babil. This was a coalition operation, a reconnaissance operation. And in north Babil, this coalition force came across this weapons cache in northern Babil. And look at the magnitude of the amount of weapons that they found: 950 mortars, 26 cases of ammunition. What was unique about this was the condition of those mortar rounds -- extremely good condition, well-placed so that people would have -- terrorists would access to them as they needed to. So that's 950 mortars that were intended to rain havoc on he people of Iraq that were taken away from the insurgents and destroyed by coalition forces.
The enemy also has successful operations. I talked about 545 attacks last week. Of those, 131 attacks were successful -- were effective -- in that they resulted in a casualty -- either a coalition casualty, an Iraqi security force casualty or an innocent Iraqi civilian.
And as I've told you, we had 29 attacks in Baghdad just yesterday. Six of those attacks happened in the morning hours. Three IEDs and three VBIEDs spread across Iraq, starting at 8:00 in the morning and working their way until 12:16 in the early afternoon. And you can see the results of each of those attacks: civilians, Iraqi police killed and injured.
The day before yesterday in Baghdad, a suicide bomber wearing a suicide vest filled with ball bearings approached a group of innocent Iraqi civilians who were standing in line to cash in food vouchers for money, detonated himself, killed 25 civilians and wounded 30 others.
So we continue to have effective operations across Iraq, as does the enemy. Zarqawi and his network continues to focus his attacks against innocent civilians. We have seen over the last several weeks about a 15 percent increase in civilian casualties, and we've seen about a 30 percent increase in attacks against Iraqi security forces. So we're seeing the insurgent move his target, his (sight ?) group, away from the coalition forces to the Iraqi security forces. And Zarqawi's (sight ?) group is specifically on Iraqi civilians -- innocent men, women and children of Iraq.
Last Thursday I stood up as Ashura began, and the people of Iraq were commemorating Ashura, the death of the third Imam. As the day progressed, 2 million pilgrims participated in the event with no attacks and no casualties against the pilgrims.
Compare that to the previous years. In 2004, in Karbala and in Baghdad, suicide attacks and explosions killed 130 people and wounded 200 more. In February of last year, attacks against mosque in Baghdad killed 10 and wounded an additional 80. This year, no casualites. This year, no attacks. Why? As I said last week, the Iraqi government planned the security for the Ashura commemoration. The Iraqi security forces executed it, and it was indeed an Iraqi success.
My comments: You would think that capturing over 100 terrorist in 1 operation would make some news. No? Hey but arrest 3 terrorist in Ohio and its front page news. LOL