BAGHDAD (AFP) — Violence across Iraq hit a four-year low last week and US and Iraqi military operations have Al-Qaeda on the run, the US military said on Sunday, but warned the jihadists remained a lethal threat.
"Iraqi-wide we have seen a significant reduction in violence in the past week," US military spokesman Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll told reporters, adding: "Security incidents decreased to a level not seen since March 2004."
He said the US internal system of monitoring violence levels showed a significant decrease in the number of incidents.
Driscoll said he could not immediately give figures for how many people had been killed or wounded across the country in the past week and how closely these compared with March 2004 levels.
But he added that the number of incidents had declined by 70 percent since the US increased its troop presence last year with "surge operations" which saw an extra 30,000 soldiers brought in to curb sectarian violence.
Al-Qaeda still posed a serious challenge to American and Iraqi security forces and had the ability to stage deadly suicide bombings and fuel sectarian violence that has claimed a heavy toll, he said.
"First of all it remains a lethal threat. They no longer control large swathes of territory. They don't control cities, but they are still out there. They are still capable of doing their high profile attacks," Driscoll said.
His remarks came a day after the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, said he believed that the security forces had got closer than ever to defeating Al-Qaeda.
"I am not saying Al-Qaeda is defeated, but they have never been so close to being defeated," Crocker said.
Driscoll said on Sunday that combined military operations by US and Iraqi forces had put Al-Qaeda to flight, but they could bounce back.
"They are certainly off balance. Now on the run. It is still too early to pop the champagne and claim victory... If we let up, they will come back," he said.
Security forces were also receiving more information from residents about weapons and insurgents, and Iraqi forces had seized around 270 arms caches since March this year, he said.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq is loosely linked to Osama bin Laden's international network, but derives support mainly from Sunni Muslim groups opposing the US military invasion of Iraq.
Iraqi defence ministry spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said ongoing Iraqi security operations in the northern province of Nineveh had resulted in the detention of some 1,030 suspects.
He said they estimated that another 2,000 may have fled troops in the province conducting a major sweep in the past two weeks.
"They (insurgents) are on the run. They can't organise their work and we will not give them a chance," Askari said.
Some of those fleeing the crackdown in Nineveh province had sought refuge in the towns of Kirkuk, Ramadi and Tikrit, hundreds of kilometres (miles) away, and even in Baghdad, he said.
In the capital itself, the Iraqi police and the US military had stepped up search operations and detained hundreds of people over the weekend, according to the US and Iraqi military.
Meanwhile the governor of Babylon province, Salem Musalamawi, survived an assassination attempt in Baghdad's Al-Qadisiyah district when a car bomb killed one of his bodyguards and wounded nine people, Iraqi security sources said.
Musalamawi is a member of the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), one of the key members of the governing coalition, which rivals radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's movement in representing Iraq's majority Shiite community.
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