(VOI) -- Iraqi security forces are awaiting the zero hour to be set by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to commence operations to track down gunmen in the restive province of Diala, an Interior Ministry official said on Sunday. "The file regarding the security operations in Diala is now on the prime minister's table for a decision to give the go-ahead for well-prepared Iraqi security forces to do their job," Maj. General Abdelkareem Khalaf, the interior ministry's operations chief, said in a press conference he held in Baghdad on Sunday.Khalaf pointed out that Diala is one of four provinces where crime and violence rates remain high, adding that the three other provinces are Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk.
"Diala is witnessing an increase in organized and non-organized crime rates on a daily basis, whether on the level of al-Qaeda network or other criminal rings," he said.
Replying to a question by Aswat al-Iraq -- Voices of Iraq -- (VOI) on the date planned to launch this security operation in Diala, Khalaf said it would be during the next few days.
More than a government official had said that the Diala operation became imminent after unbridled violence grew there.
Last June, Maliki, during a meeting with notables in the province of Missan, said the next stop would be in Diala, in reference to launching wide-scale military operations in the manner of Bashaer al-Salam (Promise of Peace) in Missan, Umm al-Rabiain (Mother of Two Springs) in Mosul and Saulat al-Forsan (Knights' Assault) in Basra.
A senior security official in Diala who asked not to be named had told VOI on Friday that military reinforcements arrived in Diala from the Iraqi capital Baghdad in preparations for launching a military operation in Diala to manhunt gunmen and impose order and law all over the province.