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BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - 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.
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 1 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.
"With the start of operations in Fallujah a few days
ago, we expected that there would be some reaction
here in Mosul,'' Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of
U.S. forces in the city, told CNN from Mosul.
Ham said he doubted the Mosul attackers were
insurgents who fled Fallujah and said most "were
from the northern part of Iraq, in and around Mosul
and the Tigris River valley that's south of the
city.''
Capt. Angela Bowman, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Mosul
headquarters, said "some of these attacks are in
support of the resistance in Fallujah.''
In a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera television,
Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the
insurgents' political office, urged militants to
fight U.S. forces outside Fallujah.
"I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers
from the mujahedeen ... to press the American forces
outside'' Fallujah, al-Baghdadi said.
"We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly
that ridding Iraq of the occupation will not be done
by ballots. Ayad Allawi's government ... represents
the fundamentalist right-wing of the White House and
not the Iraqi people,'' he continued - a reference
to the interim Iraqi prime minister, who gave to the
go-ahead for the Fallujah invasion.
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 which could inflame ethnic
rivalries with Mosul's Sunni Arab population.
Nevertheless, 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.
Army and Marine units moved to tighten their
security cordon around Fallujah, backed by FA-18s
and AC-130 gunships.
The largest pocket of remaining resistance fighters
were cornered Friday in the city's southwest as
airstrikes and strafing runs continued.
"The rout is on,'' said a 1st Cavalry Division
officer. "It won't be long now.''
Iraqi forces were charged with searching every
building in Fallujah, working from north to south,
the military said.
In the city's north, U.S. forces reported roving
squads of three to five militants shooting
small-arms fire and moving easily through narrow
alleyways. Troops were finding numerous weapons
caches, 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 that
were booby-trapped.
Fighting was so fierce that, on one occasion, U.S.
troops fought insurgents room to room, just a few
feet away from each other in the same 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 aged 15 to 55 from
leaving is key to the mission's success.
"If they're not carrying a weapon, you can't tell
who's who,'' said an officer with the 1st Cavalry
Division.
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-Qaida-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.
U.S. and Iraqi authorities launched the Fallujah
operation to restore government control so that
national elections can go ahead by the end of
January as planned. However, hardline Sunni clerics
are calling for a boycott to protest the Fallujah
attacks.
In Baghdad, Iraqi security forces, backed by U.S.
troops, arrested one of those clerics, Sheik Mahdi
al-Sumaidaei, and about two dozen other people after
a raid of his Baghdad mosque uncovered weapons and
photographs of recent attacks on American troops,
U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
Mosul area deputy Gov. Khissrou Gouran said gunmen
tried to storm a food distribution center in the
city's Yarmouk area but were forced back by National
Guardsmen and security guards. The gunmen were
trying to destroy election registration cards held
at the center, Gouran said.
In Washington, President Bush met with his top ally
in the war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and
warned that with Iraqi elections approaching, "the
desperation of the killers will grow and the
violence could escalate.'' But he said victory in
Iraq would be a blow to terrorists everywhere.
Fallujah militants fought Marines to a standstill
last April during a three-week siege, which the Bush
administration called off amid public criticism over
civilian casualties.
Many, if not most, of Fallujah's 200,000-300,000
residents fled the city before the assault. It is
impossible to determine how many civilians not
involved in the insurgency were killed.
Commanders said they believe 1,200-3,000 insurgents
were holed up in Fallujah before the offensive.
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Associated Press reporters Jim Krane near Fallujah
and Tini Tran, Sameer N. Yacoub, Mariam Fam, Sabah
Jerges, Katarina Kratovac and Maggie Michael in
Baghdad contributed to this report.
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