- Title: IRAQ: INSURGENTS FIRE AT UNITED STATES AND IRAQI TROOPS
- Date: 15th November 2004
- Summary: (W6) MOSUL , IRAQ (NOVEMBER 14, 2004) (REUTERS) 1. SLV INSURGENTS SHOOTING, HELICOPTER FLYING OVERHEAD, SMOKE RISING FROM THE CITY 0.55 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
- Embargoed: 30th November 2004 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: MOSUL, IRAQ
- Country: Iraq
- Reuters ID: LVA4CRSHK7FXAG8ZP3NRG7PCJQ3M
- Story Text: Insurgents fire at U.S. and Iraqi troops in Mosul.
Insurgents overran a police station in the northern
Iraq city of Mosul on Sunday (November 14, 2004) and U.S. troops,
backed by Iraqi security forces, were battling to retake it
from them.
Insurgents in the south of Mosul were seen carrying
machine guns in the streets and shooting at U.S. and Iraqi
forces.
A U.S. military spokeswoman in the city said a group of
insurgents stormed the Sheikh Fatih police station in
southwestern Mosul earlier in the day and said U.S. and
Iraqi forces had been fighting for more than two hours to
retake it.
Last week, insurgents stormed and looted at least nine
police stations in the city, Iraq's third largest, stealing
weapons, flak jackets and police vehicles.
U.S. Brigadier General Carter Ham, who is in charge of
security in the north, said on Saturday (November 13) that
all the city's 33 police stations had been secured and the
city of two million was returning to calm, although he
expected further attacks.
Mosul tipped into chaos on Wednesday and Thursday
(November 10-11) when groups of up to 50 militants ran
amok, taking over some neighbourhoods, parading through the
city centre brandishing their weapons and chasing away
local police forces.
Scores of police defected, stripping off their uniforms
and joining the insurgents.
The surge in violence coincided with the U.S.
military's full-scale offensive against around 2,000-3,000
insurgents, foreign fighters, Sunni Muslim nationalists
and loyalists to the former regime, holed up in Falluja,
west of Baghdad.
Military officials say many of the militants fled
before that attack, and there has been an increase in
violence across towns and cities throughout the Sunni
Muslim belt of the country since, including in Baquba,
Tikrit, Baiji, Samarra and Mosul.
The military spokeswoman in Mosul, Captain Angela
Bowman, said the city remained "relatively calm" on Sunday
despite the attack on the police station, and said Mosul's
governor remained confident that the city was under his
control.
Following the attacks last week, the Iraqi government
fired Mosul's police chief and sent reinforcements of the
Iraqi national guard to boost the security force presence
on the streets.
A battalion of General Ham's Stryker Force Brigade,
sent to help out in Falluja, was deployed back to Mosul
last week to help re-establish control in the city.
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