On patrol with the 'surge' in Baghdad
Updated on 09 March 2007
An exclusive insight into the American surge in Baghdad. Sunni snipers in action against the US Twelfth Cavalry.
A Channel 4 News team embedded with the US military has discovered the dangers facing those troops on the streets of Baghdad - and the risk to Iraqi civilians caught up in the fighting.
Ten Iraqi policemen are missing, feared kidnapped, after a raid on a police station to the North of Baghdad. It comes amid a surge of extra American troops to Iraq to combat the sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis.
Foreign Affairs Correspondent Nick Paton Walsh and cameraman/producer Tim Lambon are with the 12th Cavalry Regiment, who are part of the surge in the capital.
Part of their task is to bring security to the streets, populated to the East largely by the Shia community and to the West by the Sunnis.
Interactive: Baghdad's Sectarian Divide
Find out more about the conflict in Baghdad with our Interactive feature - Baghdad's Sectarian Divide.
The 12th Cavalry are currently operating in Sunni West patrolling in armoured vehicles and on foot in the suburb of Ghazaliya. It was here, between the highway to Mosul and the road to Abu Ghraib, that the unit came under fire - with the US military responding in kind.
