A U.S. combat brigade commander was shot by a sniper while surveying the construction of a wall to protect a Sunni Arab enclave in Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Monday. Colonel Billy Don Farris, commander of the 2nd "Falcon" Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, was shot in eastern Adhamiya on May 3, a statement said. Farris, who was hit by a single bullet, was evacuated from the area and is in stable condition. Initial plans to build a controversial 5-km (3-mile) wall with concrete barriers up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) high drew bitter complaints from residents in Adhamiya, which is surrounded on three sides by Shi'ite districts. They said the project would isolate them from other communities and sharpen sectarian tensions. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a halt to its construction. The Iraqi military later said it was modifying the plan to use barbed wire and smaller cement barriers instead.
The temporary barrier is one of a number being built in Baghdad as part of a three-month-old security plan aimed at halting sectarian violence and protecting neighbourhoods and markets. U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad has reduced the number of sectarian killings blamed on death squads, but a string of car bombs has killed hundreds in recent weeks. The crackdown, seen as a last-ditch attempt to stop Iraq from sliding into all-out civil war, is aimed at giving Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki breathing space to push power-sharing agreements to tame the raging Sunni resistance.
Both President George W. Bush and General David Petraeus, commander of the 150,000 U.S. forces in Iraq, have called al Qaeda "public enemy number one" in Iraq. Since U.S-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, the country has been plagued by violence that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,300 U.S. soldiers.