By Xinhua,
Baghdad : U.S. and Iraqi troops are building concrete walls through Baghdad’s Shiite bastion of Sadr City in an attempt to prevent militias from firing mortars and rockets on the Green Zone, an Interior Ministry source said on Saturday.
Hundreds of barriers of concrete blocks, some up to three meters high, are being erected to construct walls along the main streets of the sprawling neighborhood of Sadr City in order to control access in and out of the divided areas, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. military and Iraqi security forces hoped that constructing the walls in the Sadr City that begun few days ago will divide the sprawling stronghold of Mahdi Army militia which will effectively cut off the militiamen’s ability to move freely, the source said.
The walls will lead to bring the Sadr City under the control ofthe Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops, and that will also hamper mortar and rocket attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the U.S. embassy and the Iraqi government offices, he said.
Such walls have mushroomed across the Iraqi capital, particularly, in the northern Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya and Baghdad’s western Sunni neighborhoods.
The walls have effective role in cutting violence as the movement of insurgents was hampered, but critics argued that the walls divide communities and widen the sectarian rifts.
Earlier in the day, a ministry source said that parts of the Shiite bastion was the scene of a joint U.S. and Iraqi troops operation overnight that killed eight people and wounding 61 others.