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The New York Times - December 30, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/30/i...ast/30iraq.html

25 Insurgents Are Killed Trying to Overrun U.S. Outpost in Mosul

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and KHALID AL-ANSARY

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 29 - United States troops and warplanes killed at
least 25 insurgents who used car bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to
try to overrun an American combat outpost in Mosul on Wednesday
afternoon, the American military said. It was the fiercest fighting the
restive northern city has seen in weeks.

Fifteen American soldiers were wounded, military officials said.

[An American soldier died in hospital on Wednesday from wounds sustained
in the attack, the miltary said Thursday, Reuters reported.]

The two-hour battle followed an ambush on Tuesday night in Baghdad where
insurgents tricked the Iraqi police into raiding a booby-trapped home
and then detonated a powerful bomb that killed at least seven police
officers and 25 others, Iraqi officials said on Wednesday. Most of the
civilian victims were family members who were crushed to death when the
blast flattened nearby homes, the officials said.

The bomb detonated just as the police charged the home, in the Ghaziliya
district of western Baghdad at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday. Ghaziliya is a
rough Sunni Muslim neighborhood on the road to Abu Ghraib prison that
has seen clashes between gunmen and the police.

The explosion left electrical appliances, bedsheets and other household
debris strewn about in the street as American soldiers and Iraqi
officials used heavy equipment to search for survivors. Two policemen
and 23 others were also wounded, officials said.

The insurgents' attack in western Mosul was the latest coordinated
strike at American or Iraqi forces, and it came eight days after a
suicide bomber killed 18 Americans and 4 others in Mosul by infiltrating
a mess tent at a military base. [The] attack began about 3:45 p.m., when
insurgents armed with a car bomb tried to blow down the concrete
barriers of the combat outpost, which is manned by a small force of
soldiers. An armored military vehicle then sped to the outpost.

The armored vehicle "found itself pretty much in the middle" of a
improvised car and roadside bombs that had been set up to attack any
American vehicles coming to the aid of the outpost, said Lt. Col. Paul
Hastings, a military spokesman in Mosul, using military acronyms for
improvised roadside bombs and car bombs. The armored vehicle, he said,
fired its .50-caliber machine gun to explode or disable the bombs, and
proceeded to the outpost.

There, the American troops were attacked by a coordinated force of about
50 insurgents who fired rocket-propelled grenades and semiautomatic
weapons. At that point, two F-18 and two F-14 military jets swooped down
on strafing runs and also fired Maverick missiles, wiping out much of
the insurgent force. "That's when the close-air support came in and did
a job on them," Colonel Hastings said.

A top insurgent commander in Mosul was captured last week, Iraqi
government officials said on Wednesday. The commander, Abu Marwan, a
33-year-old member of the Mosul terrorist group Abu Talha, which is
affiliated with Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was seized on
Dec. 23 based on tips from Iraqi citizens, they said.

The Iraqi government described Mr. Marwan as a "key al-Zarqawi
operative" who was "responsible for conducting and commanding terrorist
operations in Mosul, purchasing weapons for Talha's terrorist group, and
coordinating the training of terrorist cells within the Abu Talha
terrorist group."

The United States military has begun a significant new offensive to root
out insurgents around Mahmoudiya and other towns in the "Triangle of
Death" south of Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, the assistant
commander of the First Cavalry Division, told The Associated Press. No
other details were available.

In the Baghdad explosion on Tuesday night, the United States military
said its experts believed that 1,700 to 1,800 pounds of explosives were
used.

The force of the explosion lifted one police car into the air and
slammed it into a nearby home, said Marwan Yousif, a laborer who lives
in the neighborhood.

"I saw many bodies scattered on the ground," Mr. Yousif said. Neighbors
had grown suspicious of the occupants of the house, who had many
late-night visitors, Mr. Yousif added.

The attackers used two subterfuges to set the trap for the police, Iraqi
officials said on Wednesday. A Sudanese who lived in the home began
firing a semiautomatic weapon at people in the neighborhood, leading
neighbors to call the police to the scene, a spokesman for the ministry
of interior said.

"He was on the roof shooting at people randomly," the spokesman said.
Just as the police approached the home, he said, "the terrorists
exploded the house, which was loaded with a giant amount of explosives."

Around the same time, two men flagged down a patrol of Iraqi police
vehicles and told them that a suspicious man living in the home was
suspected of terrorist activities, said an Iraqi police major.

"Our moving patrols received a report from two bearded men before the
explosion happened, and they later found out it was a trap for our men
as this place was loaded with a great amount of explosives," the major
said. "Our patrols moved to the site and used loudspeakers to get them
out, but the people inside did not respond and so our men raided the
house. The moment they forced open the door, the house exploded."

The initial police investigation has found evidence that car bombs were
being manufactured in the home, the Iraqi major said. He said the police
regretted not detaining the two bearded men, as they are now believed to
have been part of the trap. The police have recovered partial remains of
the Sudanese who lived in the house, he added.

Ghaziliya is home to many former soldiers under Saddam Hussein and,
according to a military assessment of insurgent strength, was a
principal destination for insurgents who fled Falluja before the
Marines' invasion in November.

That attack capped a bloody Tuesday across Iraq that saw at least 23
other police and national guard officers slain in multiple attacks,
mainly across the Sunni-dominated zone north of Baghdad. American
commanders believe the attacks on Iraqi forces are a coordinated
strategy to disrupt the January parliamentary elections by making Iraqis
too afraid for their safety to vote, while eviscerating the police and
guard units the United States is relying on to take over security in
Iraq one day.

In a move apparently aimed at bolstering Iraqi security forces before
the elections, the Minister of Defense, Hazem Shaalan, said on Wednesday
that Iraqi National Guard troops would be incorporated into the Iraqi
Army on Jan. 6.

Effort to Form Coalition

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 29 (AP) - Leaders of the main Shiite Muslim
political party will reach out to the minority Sunni Muslims to form a
coalition government if they win next month's general elections, Senator
Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said.

The senator met with representatives of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the leader
of the nation's largest political party, the Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Mr. Lieberman said later that if the greater coalition that Mr. al-Hakim
heads won the elections on Jan. 30, it "intends to reach out and attempt
to build what I would describe as a coalition government, certainly with
Prime Minister Allawi and others in the government now and with Sunni
representatives."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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