April 23 (Reuters) - In a new tactic to stop suicide bombers, U.S. troops have begun walling off flashpoint areas in Baghdad with concrete barriers, drawing sharp criticism from some Sunni and Shi'ite political parties. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said on Sunday he had ordered the U.S. military to stop work on a 12-foot (3.6-metre) high, 5-km (3 mile) wall around the Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya. Here are some details of other historic barriers or walls. BERLIN WALL: -- The Berlin Wall, for 28 years the most potent symbol of a divided Europe, came down in 1989 when East Germany threw open its heavily-guarded borders with the West. -- Between the end of World War Two and 1961, some 3 million people had moved to the West from Soviet-occupied East Germany and East Berlin. Fearing their existence, East Germany's leaders decided to build the wall in 1961 after winning backing from Soviet leader Nikita Khruschchev. -- Hardline East German leader Walter Ulbricht entrusted the top-secret, 155 km (96 mile) wall to Erich Honecker, who went on to succeed him as head of state. -- In 1989, with the Communist Party fighting for political survival, the government threw open its prison-like western borders, letting people travel or emigrate freely. ISRAELI WEST BANK BARRIER: -- Israel began building the barrier, an electronic fence topped with razor wire in some places and a concrete wall in others, in the West Bank in June 2002. Israel has so far built about half of the planned 670-km-long (400 mile) barrier. -- Its said aim was to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers who have struck dozens of times during an uprising for independence that began in September 2000. Palestinians and human rights groups said the barrier unfairly prejudges the borders of a future Palestinian state. -- The International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled the barrier illegal. Palestinians have denounced it as a new "Berlin Wall" that imperils peace prospects. NORTHERN IRELAND PEACELINES: -- They grew up gradually in the early days of the "Troubles" in the 1970's and range in length from a few hundred yards to over three miles, separating Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods in Belfast. -- There are still over 30 peace lines in Northern Ireland. One of the most notorious is between strongly pro-British Shankhill Road and the Catholic Falls Road. One of the biggest is the 30 foot-high, million-brick Springfield-Springmartin peace line built in late 1994, at the time the Irish Republican Army announced a cease-fire.
