BAGHDAD — Iraq’s defense minister promised Sunday to wage a new crackdown in a province northeast of Baghdad where militants are trying to regroup after being routed from their urban stronghold there last summer.
Suicide attacks have killed more than 20 people in the past three days in Diyala province, a tribal patchwork of Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds that stretches from Baghdad to the border with Iran.
Defense Minister Abdul-Qader al-Obeidi said preparations had begun for a fresh military operation in the provincial capital, Baqubah, about 35 miles from Baghdad.
“If we succeed in controlling areas of Diyala close to Baghdad, the rate of incidents in Baghdad decreases by 95 percent,” al-Obeidi said.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, arrived in southern Iraq on a surprise visit to the southern city of Basra, signaling what London hopes will be the transition from a military mission in Iraq to one with a stronger economic component, aimed at reinvigorating a country torn apart by war and years of neglect under Saddam Hussein.
“The great venture that started with all the difficulties we face, that cost causalities, means we have managed now to get Iraq into a far better position,” Brown told British troops. “Not that violence has ended, but we are able to move to provincial Iraqi control, and that’s thanks to everything you have achieved.”
The British plan to hand over security responsibilities for the oil-rich area to the Iraqis in the coming weeks.
Violence has declined sharply in Iraq since June, when the influx of U.S. troops to the capital and its surrounding areas began to gain momentum. Baghdad has seen some of the most dramatic improvements.
