[Shadow_Group] U.S. offensive expanded to include Mosul - Iraq

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

U.S. offensive expanded to include Mosul 
11/13/2004 1:27:00 PM GMT  
U.S.- expanded its major offensive in Fallujah to
include Mosul
 
FROM:
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=5689<http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=5689>
The Iraqi government sent reinforcements to the Iraqi
city of Mosul after police fled and Iraqi fighters
managed to seize control of the city streets.

U.S.- expanded its major offensive in Fallujah to
include Mosul, Iraqi's third largest city, to curb the
resistance there as scores of fighters opened a new
front in the city.

The violence outbreak in Mosul came as U.S. troops
face fierce resistance in Fallujah while airstrikes
and strafing runs continued. 

Mosul residents reported that police has disappeared
from Mosul, 225 miles north of the Iraqi capital, as
fighters launched several raids, including an attack
on the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan party.

On Saturday, Iraqi troops pounded parts of Mosul,
residents said. The U.S. military reported that at
least 10 Iraqi soldiers have been killed since clashes
erupted in the city two days ago. 

Capt. Angela Bowman, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Mosul
headquarters, said "some of these attacks are in
support of the resistance in Fallujah." 

Meanwhile Iraqi authorities dismissed Mosul's police
chief after officials reported that officers were
abandoning their stations to Iraqi fighters any
resistance. 

In separate developments, Iraqi fighters shot down a
U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter north of
Baghdad, wounding three crew members, the military
said. It is the third U.S. helicopter to be downed
this week. 

Four other U.S. helicopters were hit by ground fire in
separate attacks near Fallujah but their crews weren't
harmed and managed to return the plane to base. 

"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, correspondent said. 

Ham said dismissed the possibility that resistance
fighters in Mosul were those who fled the offensive in
Fallujah over the past days 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." 

During a telephone interview with Al-Jazeera satellite
channel Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, an official of the
insurgents' political office, urged the Iraqis to
continue fighting against the U.S. occupation 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
Iraqi prime minister, who approved the U.S.-led
Fallujah in Fallujah.  

U.S. forces and Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi are
seeking to wrest control of all Iraqi cities ahead of
the country's elections due in January.






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