BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 15 — The Iraqi government plans to seal off Baghdad next month by ringing it with a series of trenches and setting up dozens of traffic checkpoints to control movement in and out of the city of seven million people, an Interior Ministry spokesman said today.

The effort is one of the most ambitious security projects in recent memory, with cars expected to be funneled through 28 checkpoints along the main arteries snaking out from the capital. Smaller roads would be closed off. The trenches would run across farmland or other open areas to prevent cars from evading the checkpoints, said the ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf.

“We’re going to build a trench around Baghdad so we can control the exits and entrances so people will be searched properly,” he said in a telephone interview. “The idea is to get the cars to go through the 28 checkpoints that we set up.”

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