[Shadow_Group] U.S., Iraqi Troops Launch Mosul Offensive

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

And the "diversionary" war on terror continues...
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U.S., Iraqi Troops Launch Mosul Offensive 
26 minutes ago   Middle East - AP 
By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer 

FROM:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20041116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20041116/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq>
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi troops stormed
insurgent-held police stations and neighborhoods
Tuesday, launching an offensive to retake parts of the
northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where gunmen staged a
mass uprising last week in support of fighters in
Fallujah. 

Troops secured several police stations by the
mid-afternoon, meeting "very little resistance," the
U.S. military said. Witnesses said insurgents blew up
three stations they were holding before abandoning
them ahead of the U.S. assault. 

U.S. warplanes and helicopters hovered over Mosul -
Iraq's third largest city, with about 1 million
residents - as loud explosions and gunfire were heard.
About 1,200 U.S. soldiers were taking part in the
offensive to recapture about a dozen police stations
abandoned by Iraqi forces in the uprising. 

Meanwhile, kidnapped British aid worker Margaret
Hassan was believed killed after Al-Jazeera television
received a video showing a hooded militant shooting a
blindfolded woman in the head. The British government
and Hassan's family in London said the victim was
likely the 59-year-old Hassan, the longtime head of
CARE International in Iraq. 

Hassan was abducted in October and had been seen on
several videos since, pleading for her life. Well
known across the region for decades of work helping
Iraqis, she was the most prominent of more than 170
foreigners kidnapped in Iraq this year. 

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb went off by a U.S. convoy
near the central Iraqi town of Balad on Tuesday,
killing an American soldier and wounding another, the
military said. 

The uprising swept across Mosul - 225 miles north of
Baghdad - amid a wave of violence across north and
central Iraq following the U.S.-led attack on
Fallujah, the insurgents' strongest bastion, west of
Baghdad. The week-old Fallujah offensive has killed at
least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers.
American officials estimate that 1,200 insurgents have
been killed in the Fallujah fighting. 

But many insurgents are thought to have slipped out of
Fallujah ahead of the U.S. onslaught. 

In a speech found Monday on the Internet, a speaker
said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the country's most
feared terror leader, called on his followers to
"shower" the Americans "with rockets and mortars"
because U.S. forces were spread too thin as they seek
to "finish off Islam in Fallujah." 

The U.S.-Iraqi assault in Mosul aimed to push back the
uprising last week by gunmen who stormed police
stations, bridges and political offices. The city's
police force was overwhelmed and, in many places,
failed to even put up a fight. Mosul Police Chief
Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi was fired amid
criticism that some police cooperated with insurgents.


Reinforcements of about 300 Iraqi National Guards
pulled from garrisons along Iran and Syria and a
battalion of a special police task force from Baghdad
were sent to Mosul. The U.S. military recalled one
infantry battalion that had been fighting in Fallujah
to return to Mosul. 

On Tuesday, Mosul's five bridges were closed to start
the operation, and American forces began securing
police stations in the western part of the city, said
U.S. Capt. Angela Bowman, with Task Force Olympia. 

"We are in the process of securing all of the police
stations and returning the police to these stations,"
she said. 

Mortars struck two areas near the main government
building in the city center, killing three civilians
and injuring 25 others, hospital officials said. A car
bomb exploded near a U.S. convoy in a Sunni Arab
neighborhood of western Mosul, wounding one U.S.
soldiers, the military said. 

Residents reported seeing two bullet-riddled bodies on
a sidewalk in the Mafraq Domis area of eastern Mosul,
one with a police ID card identifying him as Talal
al-Jubori. Both were wearing civilian clothes, and one
had bandages on his leg. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it was investigating
the fatal shooting of a wounded "enemy combatant" by a
U.S. Marine in a mosque in Fallujah. The inquiry was
begun after videotaped pool pictures taken Saturday by
NBC showed the incident during an operation of the
Marines 3rd Battalion, 1st Regiment. 

On the video, a Marine can be heard shouting
obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the
men against the wall in the mosque was only pretending
to be dead. It then briefly shows a Marine raising his
weapon toward one of the men lying on the ground. 

The video, provided later to Associated Press
Television News and other members of the network pool,
showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body,
possibly the head. His blood splatters on the wall
behind him and his body goes limp. 

It is unclear from the footage whether the body was
moving before the shot. Kevin Sites, the TV reporter
embedded with the Marines, said the man who was shot
to death didn't appear to be armed or threatening in
any way, and there were no arms visible in the room. 

The Marine has been withdrawn from the battlefield
pending the results of the investigation. 

In Baghdad, meanwhile, U.S. forces arrested Naseer
Ayaef, a high-ranking member of an influential Sunni
political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, party
official Ayad al-Samarrai told The Associated Press. 

Al-Samarrai said the arrest was punishment for the
party's objections to "Fallujah and to the security
policies adopted by the Americans and the Iraqi
government." Last week, the Iraqi Islamic Party
withdrew from Allawi's government to protest the
Fallujah offensive. 



 



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