Maliki says Iraq thwarted militant plan in Baghdad

BAGHDAD, July 12 (Reuters) Iraq's Prime Minister, Nuri al- Maliki, said today Iraqi security forces had thwarted an attempt by militants to occupy districts in western Baghdad, the scene of fierce sectarian clashes in the past few days.

''There was a plan to occupy Baghdad's districts west of the Tigris but Iraqi forces were able to thwart this occupation,'' Maliki told a session of parliament.

''They tried but they failed. Nobody can threaten the security of Iraqis. Our forces started to creep into these areas and to control them.'' Maliki did not say which militant group was behind the plan.

In some of the bloodiest communal violence in Baghdad since the US-led invasion, Shi'ite gunmen roamed a mostly Sunni neighbourhood in western Baghdad on Sunday, killing 40 people in a rampage that followed an attack on a Shi'ite mosque there.

Clashes between Sunni and Shi'ite fighters also erupted in western Sunni Ghazaliya district over the weekend.

Scores of people have been killed in tit-for-tat-attacks, street fighting and bomb blasts since last Friday alone, raising the spectre of civil war.

The US ambassador to Iraq said yesterday that sectarian violence was now the main threat to stability and, warning of the global risk from an Iraqi civil war, said the government must act to curb it within six months.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in a visit to Iraq today, held security talks in Baghdad's fortified ''Green Zone'' with Iraqi leaders and US military commanders.

REUTERS SHB ND1534