The borders with Syria and Iran will soon be shut down and blanket telecommunications monitoring will start. New security measures are said to have prompted the radical Shiite leader to fly. The US says he has gone to Iran but his collaborators deny this.

Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Shutting down borders with Iran and Syria, stretching the night curfew, monitoring telephone lines, internet and wireless communications and a suggestion not to carry out raids in places of worship except in “extreme cases”. These are the details of a security plan that came into force today to bring back law and order to Baghdad. The plan was officially confirmed by the Premier Nouri al-Maliki after General Abboud Qanbar, head of the government forces, announced it on the national TV channel al-Iraqiya. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr are shrouded in mystery after his closest collaborators denied US claims that he had fled to Iran.

Baghdad will close the main border crossing points with Iran and Syria – from where arms and terrorists could pass – and will declare other passages to be out of use for an indeterminate time. However it is not known when these moves will be implemented. Anonymous government sources said the borders could be closed within two days. The operation, aimed at stopping sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital, will see 90,000 men deployed between Iraqi and US troops.

The security plan is said to have prompted al-Sadr to flee after being targeted for months by US forces. Washington considers the Mahdi army, militias loyal to the radical Shiite leader, to be the greatest threat to Iraq’s national security and has asked al-Maliki to disarm them. But the government depends heavily on the political backing of the influential movement led by al-Sadr. A close collaborator of his denied the news spread by a CNN bulletin that claimed Moqtada had sought to refuge in Iran. "Moqtada is in Najaf but he has reduced public appearances for security reasons," Nassar al-Rubaei, head of the Sadrist bloc in parliament, said.

• IRAQ
• IRAN
• SYRIA
• security
• TERRRISM
• shiites
• AL
• SADR