Iraqis Expand Baghdad Security Operation

A resident views a big hole in the ceiling of his building following a bomb blast inside one of the apartments on Thursday, in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday Sept. 1, 2006. A barrage of coordinated bomb and rocket attacks on Aug. 31, 2006, across eastern Baghdad neighborhoods killed at least 55 people and wounded more than 200 within about half an hour, police said Friday.The attacks on mainly Shiite neighborhoods came even as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Iraqi forces should have control over most of the country by year's end. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) (Khalid Mohammed - AP)

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraqi forces will expand their security operation into eastern Baghdad _ including Shiite militia strongholds _ the Defense Ministry said Friday, a day after a barrage of coordinated attacks across those areas killed 64 people and wounded 286.

Rescue crews pulled bodies from the rubble after Thursday night's violence, which police said included explosives planted in apartments, car bombs and several rocket and mortar attacks on mainly Shiite neighborhoods.

The bloodshed capped a violent week that saw hundreds of Iraqis killed, despite a massive security crackdown in the capital that has targeted some of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods.

Authorities reported more violence Friday, with a mortar attack on an open-air market in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad, that killed three people and wounded 12, an Iraqi army official said.

Gunmen also fatally shot one policeman in each of two towns outside Baghdad, while police said they found the body of a Saddam Hussein-era intelligence officer who had been kidnapped and shot.

The U.S. Defense Department issued a report to Congress saying sectarian violence is spreading in Iraq, with illegal militias becoming more entrenched, especially in Baghdad neighborhoods where they are seen as providers of security as well as basic social services.

Death squads targeting mainly Iraqi civilians are a growing problem, heightening the risk of civil war, the report said.

"Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife," it said, adding that the Sunni-led insurgency "remains potent and viable" even as it is overshadowed by the sect-on-sect killing.

Thursday's attacks in Baghdad centered on neighborhoods controlled by Shiite militias, some of which Sunni Arabs accuse of running death squads.

Defense Ministry spokesman Muhammad Al-Askari said security forces planned to expand in a matter of days into an area of eastern Baghdad that includes the neighborhoods targeted Thursday. The move is part of "Operation Together Forward," a security crackdown that targets the capital's most violent districts in phases and has seen an extra 12,000 Iraqi and U.S. troops deployed in the capital.

"We have prepared everything, but we are waiting to mobilize the troops and prepare the special military units that will implement the raids," he said.

Sadr City, a stronghold of firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, would also be included, al-Askari told The Associated Press.