Iraq launches drive to secure violent capital

Each Iraqi family can keep one assault rifle, and many armed civilians emerge at night as locally formed protection committees seal off their own neighborhoods. Saif says any police or military force will need to bring senior officers – or a US escort – if they want to search his house.

"We should attack [insurgents] within their safe houses," says Iraqi policeman Haitham Sami, as he searched a suspect car Wednesday after a car bombing. "As much as we can, we will keep safe neighborhoods safe."

Sectarian violence has flared since February, largely due to the alleged presence of death squads in the Shiite-led Ministry of Interior and other security forces. In some cases, young Sunni men are attempting to get a second identity card made, that might change their Sunni name "Omar," to the Shiite name "Amar."

As the crackdown loomed, some Iraqis were keeping identity cards close at hand so that they could produce them quickly for officers conducting raids. And they were stocking up on nonperishable canned goods and rice. The cost of 30 eggs jumped from 3,750 Iraqi dinar ($2.55) on Monday to 4,500 dinar ($3.06) the next day.

One focus of the raids will be the insurgent stronghold of Dora, in southern Baghdad. Property prices there have dropped by half in the past year, a sign of the neighborhood's instability. On Wednesday, only a tenth of the shops there opened.

"The militia [death squads] will come with the Iraqi police in a formal way, so they can kidnap and kill us," says one worried Sunni security guard, who asked not to be named.

The man planned to move his wife and three children to another area later in the day Wednesday. He says the police often refuse to collect bodies from the streets, and claims that the killing of Sunnis in Dora by Shiites "is very organized."

But there were many reminders of the daily violence across Baghdad even as the security operation gathered pace. Early in the morning, a university student passed American forces defusing a roadside bomb near his house in southwest Baghdad.

Later, during his exam in the northwest Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, gunfire erupted. One witness described a man in a bulletproof vest blasting his gun into the sky.

Iraqi troops who deployed to the main square with five tanks said their arrival sparked shooting into the air from insurgents – and that the soldiers responded by also shooting into the air. Later reports spoke of a gun battle, but there were no reports of injuries.

"Everyone showed their muscle and their power," said one Sunni toy-shop owner nearby. The mutual shooting lasted more than an hour. "These things [sectarian killings] will never end, because of the hatred in the depths of their hearts. Some people even say: 'If my father was a Shiite, I would kill him.' "

Bombs also took their toll, despite the security boost. A woman and her son died when a car bomb ended a shopping trip for a new bedroom set for the soon-to-be groom. The wood panels for the furniture were already loaded into the family's truck in the northern district of Al-Qahirah.

The owner of a building damaged in the blast blamed insurgents, and said it was revenge on the local people for calling the police the day before to disarm another bomb.

"If people don't cooperate, then everything will fail," says Sadiq Hamid, the building owner. "But if people agree to cooperate, [the security operation] will meet success."

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