Comical Allawi, the new Baghdad Bob

“The level of criminal operations has receded and is continuing to drop following the operation in Fallujah,” Comical Allawi said on the state-owned Iraqiya television, in response to questions from viewers. “The cleansing in Fallujah of terrorist elements is continuing and we are preparing for the residents to return to their city,” he added.

Comical Allawi announced today that violence is decreasing.

• Attacks have increased against U.S., Iraqi and other targets on the road leading from the center of Baghdad to the city’s international airport, located on the western outskirts of the capital.

  The British Embassy announced Monday that its staff would no longer be permitted to travel on the airport road, which the U.S. State Department has identified as one of the most dangerous routes in Iraq.

• South of the capital, U.S., British and Iraqi forces pressed an offensive aimed at clearing insurgents from an area known as the “triangle of death.” Two Marines were killed there Sunday, U.S. officials said, and British troops escaped serious injury Monday when a bomb exploded next to a Scimitar light tank from the Queen’s Dragoon Guards.
• The Pentagon said Monday the U.S. military death toll in Iraq stands at 1,251, up by 21 since the last reported toll released Nov. 24. That means at least 130 U.S. troops have died in Iraq this month. The deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq was last April, when 135 died.
• In Geneva, the international Red Cross said Iraq’s Red Crescent had set up a relief center in Fallujah to aid civilians, but doctors and nurses have been unable to treat the wounded because of continued fighting between U.S.-led forces and insurgents.

  “There are many civilians who are still trapped in the city and don’t dare to come to the Red Crescent office,” said Rana Sidani of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

  She said there was a shortage of drinking water in Fallujah and the city water purification station was not working “because there is nonstop fighting around it.”

• At least 50 people have been killed in Mosul in the past 10 days — most of them believed to have been supporters of Iraq’s interim government or members of its security forces.
• In addition, two U.S. Marines were killed in a weekend bombing south of the capital, a U.S. official said Monday. U.S., British and Iraqi forces have been sweeping through the area to clear Sunni insurgents from a string of towns and cities between Baghdad and the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.
• Insurgents stepped up attacks on Iraq’s fledgling security forces, killing seven Iraqi police and guardsmen Monday in a suicide bombing hours after storming a police station north of the capital. Two U.S. soldiers died in a bombing in Baghdad.
• A US military spokesman also reported that 13 marines and two civilians were wounded Monday when mortar shells struck a military base south of Baghdad