WASHINGTON, April 4 (UPI) -- Sectarian killings are down in Baghdad, but the number of car bomb killings is rising, a new report says.
The report, released Tuesday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said that the Iraqi Sunni Muslim rebellion, or "insurgency is adapting to fewer, large-scale bombings tailored to keep up the pressure for civil war."
"Sunni insurgents are focusing on large suicide and car bombings designed to provoke civil war and show that Baghdad cannot be secured, while pushing Shiites toward reprisal attacks," said the report, entitled "Iraq's Sectarian and Ethnic Violence: Developments Through Spring 2007." It was written by Anthony A. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at CSIS.
"February and March 2007 saw a 50 percent decrease in sectarian execution-style killings, but a rise in car bombs; Iraqi deaths increased 15 percent from February to March," the report said.
"The analysis of the fighting reveals that the patterns of violence in Iraq are national, not local," the report said.
"Winning security control of Baghdad and losing Iraq's 11 other major cities and countryside to Iraq's sectarian and ethnic factions cannot achieve victory in strategic terms. The minimal requirement for a successful U.S. strategy is a relatively stable and secure Iraq, not temporary U.S. military control of Baghdad," it said.
