A total of 211 people were killed in violence in April, official figures showed. Hand-held bomb and weapons detectors used by Iraqi security forces are useless in the face of a rise in assassinations in Baghdad, the capital's security spokesman said on Wednesday. Major General Qassim Atta told a news conference that detailed checks of every car for pistols at all checkpoints across Baghdad would worsen the city's already choking traffic, and said the detectors, derisively referred to as "magic wands" by critics, were unsuitable. "The detective devices detect explosives, and not pistols or machine guns," Atta said, contradicting claims in previous months and years by other officials that they also detected bullets and other weapons. "The security forces are focusing on explosives, not pistols. "If they do detailed checks on every car, life will completely stop in parts of Baghdad."
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The hand-held explosives detectors to which Atta was referring have been widely panned as ineffective for even their core purposes, after they failed to prevent several massive bombings in Baghdad in recent years. British firm ATSC manufactured and sold the device, the ADE651, to Iraq. In January 2010, Britain banned the export of the ADE651 device after tests showed it was not suitable for bomb detection. The ADE651 is a hand-held, pistol-shaped piece of equipment which uses a series of interchangeable credit card size paper cards said to be able to detect explosives such as C4 and TNT, as well as weapons. It was reputedly sold for between 16,500 and 60,000 dollars per unit, and has become ubiquitous in Iraq, having been bought in large numbers by local security forces.
