'More Troops' Call As Iraq Murders Soar
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor- The Observ
In a further setback, the US military announced yesterday the loss of an entire patrol south of Baghdad, with five soldiers dead and three others missing, after they were ambushed by insurgents in the town of Mahmoudiya.
The new figures emerged as the commander of US forces in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, admitted he did not have enough soldiers to contain the escalating violence in Diyala province, which neighbours Baghdad and has become the focus of the heaviest fighting between largely Sunni insurgent groups and the US army, which has seen casualties increase by 300 per cent. Sixty-one US soldiers have been killed in Diyala this year, compared with 20 in all of last year.
Mixon, interviewed by The Observer earlier this year, has not made a secret of his frustration at the declining situation in Diyala and has already reinforced the area around Baqouba - the centre of the heaviest fighting - with additional troops.
Ironically, the violence in Diyala has been exacerbated by an influx of both Shia and Sunni fighters displaced from Baghdad by the surge and also from Anbar province who have relocated to Diyala to join a series of jihadi and nationalist groups already based there.
Mixon, who was speaking in Tikrit, said: 'I'm going to need additional forces, to get that situation to a more acceptable level, so the Iraqi security forces will be able in the future to handle that.' He was also highly critical of Iraqi government in Baghdad, charging that it was riddled with corruption.
Mixon's request coincided with yet more bad news from Iraq - a draft US government report claiming that between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq's declared oil production may have been siphoned off through corruption in the past four years.
Iraqi and American officials have long contended that oil smuggling from fields controlled by Shia militias in the south is costing Iraq billions of dollars - funds that, it is feared, are going to armed groups.