(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-12 11:21

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of US forces south of the capital, said Sunday he believed the decrease would hold, because of what he called a "groundswell" of support from regular Iraqis.

"If we didn't have so many people coming forward to help, I'd think this is a flash in the pan. But that's just not the case," Lynch told a small group of reporters over lunch in the Green Zone.

He attributed the sharp drop in attacks to the American troop buildup, the setup of small outposts at the heart of Iraqi communities, and help from locals fed up with al-Qaida and other extremists.

"These people -- Sunni and Shiite -- are saying, 'I've had enough,'" Lynch said.

The US military has recruited at least 26,000 Iraqis to help target militants in Lynch's area of operations, he said. The religiously mixed area, which includes suburbs of Baghdad and all of Karbala, Najaf and Wassit province along the Iranian border, is about the size of the US state of West Virginia.

Some 17,000 of those people, whom the US military calls "concerned local citizens," are paid $300 a month to man checkpoints and guard critical infrastructure in their hometowns, Lynch said.

"They live there, and they know who's the good guy and who's the bad guy," he said.

Such local expertise has paid off for American troops and their Iraqi counterparts, who have killed or captured about 3,000 insurgents in the area in the past year, Lynch said.

Many of those who have not joined the US-led fight against extremists have fled, al-Maliki said.

"The majority of these terrorists are fleeing to nearby countries, and I warned our brothers in the Islamic and Arab countries to be aware," he said.

The prime minister also said he was considering an amnesty for those "who were lured or committed some crimes," although he added that the move would not include those "convicted of killings or bombings."

In a sign the government is working toward reconciliation, 70 former members of Saddam Hussein's party were reinstated to their jobs after they joined the fight against al-Qaida in Anbar province, said Ali al-Lami, a senior official with the commission that considered their cases.

Al-Lami told the AP that the former Baath party members included 12 university professors, officers in the disbanded Iraqi army, former policemen and teachers.

Despite security improvements, a trickle of violence continued Sunday, with at least 10 people were killed or found dead around the country. The toll included a 12-year-old girl in Baghdad's Baladiyat area, who was killed by a roadside bomb that aimed for an American convoy but missed its target, police said.

Also Sunday, the US military said it had achieved "significant progress" in operations against al-Qaida in four northern provinces since American and Iraqi forces launched Operation Iron Hammer last week.

A US statement said during the first week of the operation, US and Iraqi forces had detained more than 200 suspected extremists, captured three "high value" al-Qaida operatives and seized more than a ton of various explosives.

American officers had predicted that al-Qaida and other extremists groups would try to regroup in the mostly Sunni north after they were driven from strongholds in Baghdad and Diyala province this year.

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