Iraq forces to take over southern province

By Michael Georgy and Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi security forces will take control
of the country’s southernmost province from a British-led
multinational force in July in the first move of its kind,
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Monday.

Transferring security to Iraq’s fledgling security forces
is a key part of London’s and Washington’s plans to withdraw
their 137,000 troops from Iraq, but a Sunni Arab insurgency
shows no sign of easing.

In Baghdad, Saddam Hussein, whose loyalists make up much of
the insurgency, listened to the chief prosecutor in his trial
demand that he be sentenced to death for the killing of 148
Shi’ites in the 1980s.

“Muthanna is the first Iraqi province that will have the
honor of being transferred from multinational forces to Iraqi
forces,” Maliki told a news conference in Baghdad.

It would be the first of Iraq’s 15 provinces outside of the
relatively peaceful Kurdish north to come under full Iraqi
control.

Maliki has said that Iraqi forces could be in control of
all but two of Iraq’s 18 provinces before the end of the year.

While the Muthanna transfer may have marked progress in the
south, a U.S. operation to flush out insurgents in the rebel
stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad, served as a reminder
that other areas have a long way to go before they are handed
to Iraqi forces.

Helicopters flew over the town and warplanes could be heard
overhead as U.S. troops hunted down guerrillas. Seven tanks
moved along Masarif Street and July 17 Street and two
explosions were heard, said a Reuters witness.

Shops were shuttered and most residents stayed home,
fearing a U.S. offensive on the scale of the one that inflicted
heavy destruction and loss of life in nearby Falluja in 2004.

The U.S. military has played down talk of that type of
campaign, saying the current operation was part of efforts to
restore stability in Ramadi, 110 miles west of Baghdad.

But Ramadi residents were planning for the worst.

“I can’t open my shop. Everybody expects the Americans to
invade the city. I already took most of the materials in my
shop and hid them in my house because the Americans could shoot
or burn my shop,” said grocery shop owner Faisal Ghazi, 50.

While U.S. forces built up their numbers in Ramadi, 8,000
U.S. and Iraqi forces and army and police pressed on with the
search for two American soldiers who went missing on Friday
after an attack on a checkpoint that killed another soldier.

Divers searched the Euphrates River and U.S. aircraft
combed the surrounding area near Yusufiya, an al Qaeda
stronghold south of Baghdad, said U.S. Major General William
Caldwell, senior military spokesman.

He said seven U.S. soldiers were wounded in the search and
three Iraqi insurgents killed. Thirty-four Iraqis were detained
in what he described as intense operations.

In the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, prosecutors
in Saddam’s trial also asked for the death penalty to be
imposed on the former president’s half brother, Barzan
al-Tikriti, and his former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan,
for crimes against humanity.

Saddam and seven co-accused are on trial for their alleged
roles in the killing of 148 Shi’ites after an assassination
attempt against Saddam in the village of Dujail in 1982.

(Writing by Michael Georgy, editing by Dominic Evans)