July 14, 2009, 14:17

A more targeted insurgency

A handful of low-level attacks in Iraq today, most of them targeting policemen. Two officers were killed by gunmen while patrolling in Baghdad; one was killed in Mosul, and three wounded, by a roadside bomb; and a police officer's nephew was kidnapped, tortured and killed in a village near Baquba.

You'll notice from our database that the scale of attacks seems to be dropping. There have been 25 insurgent attacks this month, by our count, but only one of them killed more than ten people (the Tal Afar bombings). We haven't seen the kind of catastrophic bombings we saw last month.

Instead, the insurgents are becoming more focused. A third of the attacks this month have targeted Iraqi police and soldiers; at least three incidents targeted Christians.