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Baghdad curfew as chaos widens
Edited for length

BAGHDAD, April 11 — Trying to prevent looting and new suicide bombings, U.S. troops on Friday began enforcing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the parts of Baghdad that they control. Looters have hit hospitals, colleges, libraries, homes and even robbed reporters. The murders of two Shiite clerics by a mob laid bare deep divides, while the deaths of two children at a checkpoint in Nasiriyah reflected the tension throughout Iraq.

THE U.S. MILITARY has said it would not become a police force, but it has taken on some of those duties. Describing it as an “awkward” period in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that a dawn-to-dusk curfew had begun in U.S.-controlled areas of the city. Military sources told NBC News that 75 percent of the city was under U.S. control.

The curfew was instituted after President Bush vowed that “coalition forces will help maintain law and order so that Iraqis can live in security.” NBC’s Chip Reid, reporting from Baghdad, said troops had been authorized to intervene when they see large-scale looting.

Lt. Col. Michael Belcher, a battalion commander, said his priorities were first to protect key structures, such as the power system, and second to safeguard humanitarian sites like hospitals and aid distribution centers. Commercial buildings are last, he said.
The curfew should also ease concerns of suicide bombings.

International aid officials criticized U.S. and British troops for failing to rein in looting mobs, saying they were obliged as an occupying force under international law to prevent chaos. “The coalition forces seem to be completely unable to restrain looters or impose any sort of control on the mobs that now govern the streets,” said Veronique Taveau, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. “This inaction by the occupying powers is in violation of the Geneva Conventions.”

In Baghdad, a U.S. Army brigade commander told reporters that troops were in “transition to stabilization operations.” “We have a lot of civil affairs guys in the town working with hospitals and trying to get water and power back on,” added Col. David Perkins.
Posted by: Tadderly 2003-04-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=12916