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Rebels stage deadly uprising in Mosul

Iraqis sent reinforcements to Mosul when gangs of armed men roamed city. Meanwhile, Fallujah fighters were cornered.

BY ROBERT H. REID
Associated Press

Posted on Sat, Nov. 13, 2004

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government rushed reinforcements Friday to the country's third-largest city, Mosul, seeking to quell a deadly militant uprising that U.S. officials suspected may be in support of the resistance in Fallujah -- now said to be under 80 percent U.S. control.

Police in Mosul largely disappeared from the streets, residents reported, and gangs of armed men brandishing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers roamed the city, 225 miles north of Baghdad. Responding to the crisis, Iraqi authorities dismissed Mosul's police chief after local officials reported that officers were abandoning their stations to militants without firing a shot.

Elsewhere, insurgents shot down a U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter near Taji, 12 miles north of Baghdad, wounding three crew members, the military said. It was the third downed helicopter this week after two Marine Super Cobras succumbed to ground fire in the Fallujah operation.

In Fallujah, U.S. troops pushed insurgents into a narrow corner in the southern end of the city after a four-day assault that has claimed 22 American lives and wounded about 170 others. An estimated 600 insurgents have died, according to the military.

Despite the apparent success in Fallujah, violence flared elsewhere in the volatile Sunni Muslim areas, including Mosul, where attacks Thursday killed a U.S. soldier. Another soldier was killed in Baghdad as clashes erupted Friday in at least four neighborhoods of the capital. Clashes also broke out from Hawija and Tal Afar in the north to Samarra -- where the police chief was also fired -- and Ramadi in central Iraq.

The most serious incidents took place in Mosul, a city of about one million people, where fighting raged for a second day. Gunmen attacked the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party in an hourlong battle that a party official said left six assailants dead.

Militants also assassinated the head of the city's anti-crime task force, Brig. Gen. Mowaffaq Mohammed Dahham, and set fire to his home.

In addition to firing the Mosul police chief, Iraqi authorities also dispatched four battalions of the Iraqi National Guard from garrisons along the Syrian and Iranian borders.

Most of the reinforcements are ethnic Kurds who fought alongside American forces during the 2003 invasion -- a move that could inflame ethnic rivalries with Mosul's Sunni Arab population. It appeared Iraqi authorities had no choice, given the apparent failure of the city's police force to maintain order.

At a U.S. camp near Fallujah, Lt. Gen. John Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said U.S. and Iraqi forces now occupy about 80 percent of the city, and that clearing operations are continuing to find caches of weapons and ammunition.

Iraqi forces were charged with searching every building in Fallujah, working from north to south, the military said.

Time magazine's Michael Ware, embedded with U.S. forces, said troops of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment who spearheaded the first push into the city early Monday found entire houses booby-trapped.

Fighting was so fierce that U.S. troops fought insurgents room to room in one house.

Troops have cut off all roads and bridges leading out of Fallujah and have turned back hundreds of men trying to flee the city during the assault. Only women, children and the elderly can leave.

The military says keeping men age 15 to 55 from leaving is key to the mission's success.

The Fallujah operation threatens to enflame passions within the Sunni community, not only against the American presence but against the Shiite majority, whose clerical leaders have by and large remained silent over the killings of Muslims in the city.

An audiotape purportedly made by al Qaeda-linked terror suspect Abu Musab al Zarqawi encouraged his fighters in Fallujah and said victory was near. He accused Kurds and Shiites in the Iraqi forces of abandoning their religion and said the offensive had been blessed by ''the infidel's imam,'' Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq.

Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder

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