- BAGHDAD, Iraq - 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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).
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- 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.
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- Militants also assassinated the head of the city's anti-crime
task force, Brig. Gen. Mowaffaq Mohammed Dahham, and set fire to his home.
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- "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.
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- 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."
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- Capt. Angela Bowman, a spokeswoman at the U.S. Mosul
headquarters, said "some of these attacks are in support of the resistance
in Fallujah."
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- 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.
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- "I call upon the scores or hundreds of the brothers
from the mujahedeen ... to press the American forces outside" Fallujah,
al-Baghdadi said.
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- "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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- The largest pocket of remaining resistance fighters were
cornered Friday in the city's southwest as airstrikes and strafing runs
continued.
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- "The rout is on," said a 1st Cavalry Division
officer. "It won't be long now."
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- Iraqi forces were charged with searching every building
in Fallujah, working from north to south, the military said.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- The military says keeping men aged 15 to 55 from leaving
is key to the mission's success.
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- "If they're not carrying a weapon, you can't tell
who's who," said an officer with the 1st Cavalry Division.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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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