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Insurgent attacks in Iraq has increased again in recent weeks after a reduction following the Jan. 30 election, but the scale was far below the peaks before the election, top Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
"It's up a little bit, from 40 a day to 50 or 60 a day, so it's up a little bit here in the last week or so," General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news briefing. "We're nowhere near any of the spikes that we've had during elections, during Fallujah, during An Najaf."
Myers said the capacity of insurgents stayed about the same as one year ago. "They have the ability to surge, and whether we're seeing a surge now or not, I don't know," he said.
The number of insurgent attacks during the peak periods Myers mentioned were almost twice the usual rate.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the recent increase in insurgent attacks should not be seen as a lack of progress in Iraq.
"In fact, we are focusing a reasonable portion of our efforts at the present time not on the counter insurgency at all; we're focusing on training Iraqi security forces in increasing amounts," Rumsfeld said.
He said the United States was moving forward in multiple fronts in Iraq, with counterinsurgency only part of the process, and insurgents would be defeated by Iraqi people.
"The insurgency will be defeated by virtue of the fact that the economic progress will take place and people will begin to see very clearly that the insurgency is harming the lives of Iraqi people," he said.
"The Iraqis will prevail in the insurgency also because over time, it will become clearer and clearer that the insurgents have no plan," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 27, 2005)
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