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General Says N. Iraq Most Violent Region

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[November 20, 2007]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite a decline in violence in Iraq, northern Iraq has become more violent than other regions as al-Qaida and other militants move there to avoid coalition operations elsewhere, the region's top U.S. commander said.

Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling on Monday said al-Qaida cells still operate in all the key cities in the north.

"What you're seeing is the enemy shifting," Hertling told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from outside Tikrit in northern Iraq.

Hertling said militants have been pushed east to his area from Anbar by the so-called Awakening movement, in which local tribes have allied with the coalition against al-Qaida. Others have been pushed north to his area from the Baghdad region, where this year's U.S. troops escalation has made more operations possible.

"The attacks are still much higher than I would like here in the north, but they are continuing to decrease in numbers and scale of attacks," he said.

Hertling said 1,830 roadside bombs were placed in his region in June, compared with 900 last month.

The U.S. military says overall attacks in Iraq have fallen 55 percent since nearly 30,000 additional American troops arrived in Iraq by June, and some areas are experiencing their lowest levels of violence since the summer of 2005.

Still, the threat posed by roadside bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, remains a serious problem, retired Gen. Montgomery Meigs, director of the Pentagon's counter-IED organization, told reporters Monday.

Meigs said that while the total number of IED attacks has declined markedly in recent months, the proportion of such attacks that result in U.S. casualties has dropped more slowly. That is at least partly because the insurgents who are still carrying out the attacks have grown more proficient.

"They are better at it," than many of the insurgents who have given up attacking U.S. forces, he said.

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Meigs also said that the standoff between the Congress and President Bush over the White House's request for war funding is going to cripple his organization's ability to pay for new counter-IED projects, if it continues into next year.

But Democrats say this isn't necessarily true. Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House Defense appropriations subcommittee, said Congress included $120 million for the task force in the military's 2008 annual budget and the military can borrow against the rest of the $471 billion that was approved. So far, the Pentagon has not asked to tranfer any money, he said.

"Protecting soldiers from IEDs has been an absolute priority for this Congress," Murtha said in a statement issued late Monday.

Meigs is leaving his position on Nov. 30, to be replaced by Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, a former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.

Hertling declined to say how many al-Qaida members he believes are in his area, but he said a recently started operation has netted some 200 detainees who are giving officials good information about the organization and how it operates.

"There are certainly cells remaining in all the key cities" in the north, he said.

"We're doing our very best on a daily basis to break those cells down," Hertling said. "We've had success, but it is still going to be a very tough fight to eliminate those terrorists and insurgents and extremists completely from those areas."

[Associated Press; By PAULINE JELINEK]

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