4,000 Iraqi Police Killed In 2 Years, U.S. Official Says

Iraqi police have suffered 4,000 killed and 8,000 wounded over the past two years as the fledgling force grapples with wartime problems including corruption and infiltration by sectarian militia, a U.S. commander said yesterday.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, commander of the Civilian Police Assistance Training Team in Baghdad, described significant headway in building an Iraqi police force, saying that 99 percent of the target force of 188,000 police has been trained and 82 percent have their equipment.

But he said continued efforts will be needed in 2007 to improve the quality of the force, provide training in leadership and basic policing skills, and weed out militia members -- some of whom are known to have carried out sectarian executions.

"It's hard to really ascertain how many individuals within the national police forces . . . still maintain loyalties to militias," Peterson said in a Pentagon teleconference with reporters. "We do ask the question, but obviously the response is always 'no.' So I have no idea what the number is."

Read the rest at the Washington Post

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