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BAGHDAD - Soldiers of the U.S. Army's 25th
Infantry Division's Stryker Brigade combat team and
Iraqi national guard units began an offensive
yesterday against insurgents in the northern city of
Mosul.
The coalition's push into southern sections of the
city came at the request of Gov. Duraid Kashmoula of
Ninevah province, which includes Mosul, after a
series of attacks on Iraqi security forces this
week.
"Insurgent forces attacked several police stations
and other targets within the city," the U.S.
military said. "In several cases, anti-Iraqi forces
exceeded the capabilities of the police on site,
requiring reinforcements."
Five Iraqi national guardsmen were killed yesterday
as militants roamed the streets, attacking and
looting police stations.
Earlier this week, two U.S. soldiers died in a
mortar attack.
"The Mosul governor has invoked immediate curfew,
and all bridges are closed," said U.S. Army Lt. Col.
Paul Hastings. "The current situation is
developing."
Security and intelligence officials of the
pro-American Kurdish autonomous region of northern
Iraq say they have concluded that Mosul, an
ethnically diverse city of 2.5 million near the
Syrian and Turkish borders, might be the next
battlefield in the war that insurgents are waging
against the U.S.-led occupation force and the
interim government.
"We are very worried about Mosul," said Kosrat
Rasool Ali, a high-level official with the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan, which controls the eastern half
of the Kurdish region.
"The same terrorists who are in Fallujah are coming
to Mosul. They are reorganizing themselves; they are
coordinating with the other groups."
Iraqi Kurds worry that fighting in Mosul, which lies
just outside the Kurd-controlled areas, could spill
over into other parts of northern Iraq, possibly
destabilizing the three-province Kurdish enclave as
well as other parts of the ethnically complex,
oil-rich north.
"Mosul is a big threat," said a high-level Kurdish
security official in Irbil, 50 miles east of Mosul,
speaking on the condition of anonymity. "It is going
to be the second Fallujah, but even worse."
A senior U.S. Embassy official in Baghdad
acknowledged the deteriorating security situation,
but downplayed the possibility of another Fallujah.
"Recent activity by terrorist elements and
insurgents indicate that they are interested in
disrupting the city, distracting attention from
Fallujah and undermining progress that has been
achieved in Mosul and throughout northern Iraq," the
official said on the condition of anonymity.
"That said, I do not expect that Mosul will develop
anything like Fallujah. The governor is still in
control, and Iraqi security forces patrol the city."
Unlike the ethnically and religiously homogenous
cities of the Sunni Triangle such as Samarra,
Fallujah and Ramadi, Mosul has a significant
Christian minority and large populations of Kurds
and Turkmen, with ties to Turkey, as well as the
Sunni Arabs who populate the ranks of the
insurgency.
After falling into chaos immediately after the
U.S.-led invasion last year, Mosul became a
relatively peaceful city under the control of Maj.
Gen. David Petreaus and the U.S. Army's
20,000-strong 101st Airborne Division.
The city is now controlled by the 8,500-soldier
Stryker Brigade.
Delphine Minoui contributed to this report from
Irbil.
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