Concrete blocks brought by US soldiers on the outskirts of a Shia enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad. (AP)

Baghdad, April 25 (Reuters): Iraq has modified a US military plan to protect a Sunni enclave in Baghdad with high concrete walls, and is using barbed wire and smaller cement barriers instead, an Iraqi military spokesman said today.

The move to alter the controversial project follows an order from Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to halt construction of the 5-km (3-mile) wall around Adhamiya, a Sunni Arab area surrounded on three sides by Shia communities.

Residents have complained bitterly that the walls, up to 12 feet (3.5 metres) tall, would isolate them from other communities and sharpen sectarian tensions.

Today, anti-American Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr slammed the US plan as a “sectarian” and “racist” project.

“We have sought other substitutes such as barbed wire, sand walls and small concrete barriers,” said Brigadier-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for a US-backed security crackdown in Baghdad.

“We immediately started implementing the order of the prime minister three days ago.”

US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox said on Monday that the erection of barriers around Baghdad’s markets and neighbourhoods was approved by Iraq’s government and that it was up to the Iraqis to make modifications.

But neither Fox nor US ambassador Ryan Crocker at a separate news conference on Monday would say if work would stop.

Both the US military and the Iraqi authorities appear to have been caught off guard by the hostility the project sparked among residents in Adhamiya.

It is not the first time Maliki has flexed his muscles with the US. He ordered the lifting of US military checkpoints in Sadr’s Baghdad stronghold last year.

The US military has said it is erecting tall concrete walls to protect at least five Baghdad neighbourhoods in what are being called “gated communities”.