Thousands of Iraqi and US-led forces prepared to mount a major security crackdown in violent Baghdad on Wednesday, hours after a surprise visit by President George W. Bush to try to bolster Iraq’s new government. “There are going to be tough days ahead, and more sacrifice for Americans, as well as Iraqis,” Bush told US troops. “Our military will stay on the offensive. We will continue to hunt down people like Mr. Zarqawi, and bring them to justice,” he said to applause.US and Iraqi military commanders say they are focusing their new security campaign on the capital Baghdad, a city of seven million people and scene of daily carnage. Iraqi officials said more than 40,000 Iraqi and US-led forces backed by tanks and armoured vehicles would take part in the mission, in what would be one of the biggest such operations since the US-led invasion in 2003. “It is an operation to step up pressure on al Qaeda in Baghdad,” national security adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told state television.
The clampdown would include increased checkpoints and patrols, focusing on the dangerous, mostly Sunni Dora and Adhamiya districts. Insurgents draw support from Iraq’s minority Sunni community, once dominant under Saddam Hussein. “There is no time limit for ending this operation because it is a strategic plan through which we are determined to impose order in tense areas,” Major General Abdel Aziz Mohammed, a senior Defence Ministry official, told Reuters.