International

Battle for Mosul escalates

By Michael Howard

MOSUL, NOV. 25. Militants escalated their campaign to take control of Mosul yesterday, ambushing a convoy of Kurdish peshmerga fighters and attacking the Kurdish Deputy Governor of Nineveh province.

The fresh assaults come after warnings from the senior U.S. military commander in Mosul, Brigadier-General Carter Ham, that militants, who stem mainly from the once all-powerful Sunni Arab community, are trying to foment civil war in the ethnically mixed city of two million.

Three peshmerga were killed and seven injured when their convoy was attacked by gunmen on the main road into eastern Mosul, said Kareem Sinjari, the Interior Minister of the Kurdistan regional government in Irbil.

``There was an exchange of fire. We took some hits, but so did they,'' he said.

The Kurdish fighters, under the command of the Kurdistan Democratic party, led by Massoud Barzani, were on their way to protect the party offices in Mosul, which have come under frequent attack since a two-day uprising this month.

In another ambush near the river Tigris, gunmen attacked the convoy of the Deputy Governor, Khasro Gouran, a Kurd, as he was leaving his office. One of his bodyguards was killed and two people, including his brother, were wounded.

Simmering tension

Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, has been simmering for a fortnight following the capture of nine police stations by militants. Up to 3,200 of the city's 4,000 police either deserted or joined the militants during the attacks.

Security in the city is now in the hands of a small force of U.S. soldiers, topped up by Kurdish units of the Iraqi National Guard, and an elite police commando unit.

Thousands of peshmerga loyal to the KDP and its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, have poured into the city — partly to protect party offices, but also to ward off attacks on its large Kurdish minority, as well as the Christian, Turkomen and Yezidi communities.

Their presence in Mosul, a stronghold of Saddam Hussein's regime, has angered many of the majority Sunni Arab community and raised the prospect of a wider Kurd versus Arab conflict.

Mosul lies to the west of the Kurdish self-rule area but is regarded by U.S. commanders and Kurdish leaders as crucial for the Kurdish region's stability.

``Its especially important for Iraq, the north and the Kurdish leaders to recognise that their security is dependent on the security in Mosul,'' said Gen. Ham.

Cooperation working

A senior Kurdish official in the city said cooperation with U.S. forces appeared to be working. ``We have killed 125 insurgents and arrested 400 over the last week,'' he said.

U.S. and Iraqi forces yesterday conducted a number of limited operations in militant neighbourhoods in the south-east of Mosul while a U.S. army spokesman said another five bodies had been found in the western part of the city. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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