Withdrawal from Iraq on schedule: Obama

The US will end its combat mission in Iraq as scheduled on August 31 despite a recent flare-up in violence, US President Barack Obama said in a speech Monday, AFP reported.

"Shortly after taking office, I announced our new strategy for Iraq and for a transition to full Iraqi responsibility," Obama told a national convention of Disabled American Veterans in Atlanta, Georgia, according to excerpts of his speech released by the White House.

"And I made it clear that by August 31, 2010, America's combat mission in Iraq would end," the president continued. "And that is exactly what we are doing, as promised, on schedule."

Obama has ordered the force to draw down to 50,000 by September 1. There are about 65,000 US soldiers currently stationed in Iraq.

August 31 will also mark the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom launched by Bush with the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to White House officials.

The pullout confirmation comes amid an increase of violence in Iraq.

The Iraqi government's figures released Saturday suggested that a total of 396 civilians were killed by bomb blasts or other attacks last month, after 204 died in June and 275 in May.

The latest bombings in Baghdad and in a town in western Anbar Province Monday killed five people and wounded seven, an Iraqi official at the Interior Ministry said.

However, the US military took the unusual step Sunday of refuting the latest figures, saying "the claim that July 2010 was the deadliest month in Iraq since May 2008 is incorrect."

Obama said that even as militants try to derail the country's progress, "violence in Iraq continues to be near the lowest it's been in years."

"We cannot judge the security situation in one country only by the figure of casualties, because the death toll is uncertain, as a hundred may die in one suicide attack," said Yin Gang, an expert on Middle East issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.