US, Iraqi troops fight to retake control in Mosul

MOSUL, Iraq -- American and Iraqi troops yesterday fought to reclaim police stations from insurgents who seized control of broad swaths of this sprawling northern city in what a top Kurdish official said was a well-organized Ba'athist resurgence to distract US and Iraqi forces from Fallujah.

American fighter jets roared overhead all day yesterday, as US soldiers shut down Mosul's five bridges and swept both banks of the Tigris River.

According to the senior Kurdish official, Sadi Ahmed Pire, Kurdish intelligence and captured insurgents confirm that the Ba'ath Party in Mosul has reconstituted itself and is coordinating attacks in Mosul against Iraqi police, government, and the Kurdish and Christian minorities.

If Pire's assertions are true, they mark an alarming shift toward more control by Ba'athists of an Iraqi insurgency that had so far been dominated by fragmented nationalist groups, local sheiks, and religious jihadi leaders.

Violence in Mosul also threatens to touch off ethnic bloodshed, as insurgents have singled out Kurds and Christians for assassination. In response, Kurdish officials have sent thousands of Peshmerga fighters into the city. They are nominally under the command of the Iraqi National Guard, but in reality answer to the two major Kurdish political parties.

In yesterday's fighting, American forces moved into the west bank of the Tigris to recapture three police stations, and insurgents fled to the east bank, where they clashed with Kurdish fighters. Machine gun and mortar fire rang out in front of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headquarters on the eastern edge of the city, where Pire commands a garrison of about 500 Kurdish fighters.

With 1.5 million residents still in the city, defeating insurgents here will prove far more complicated than in Fallujah, a city one-fifth the size of Mosul that was largely emptied of civilians before last week's invasion.

Captain Angela Bowman, spokeswoman for the US Army in Mosul, said about 1,000 American soldiers were involved in yesterday's operations. Iraqi police had been ordered off the streets, and the military said it would enforce a 4 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.

''Offensive operations have begun on the western side of the river to clear out final pockets of insurgent fighting," Bowman said. ''It's a significant operation to secure police stations in the area and make sure they can be put to use again."

The United States launched the operation after rushing US and Iraqi reinforcements to Mosul. A US Army infantry battalion was recalled from the fighting in Fallujah, 300 Iraqi National Guard soldiers came from garrisons along the borders with Iran and Syria, and a special police battalion was sent from Baghdad.

Under Saddam Hussein, the city and surrounding province contributed hundreds of thousands of officers to elite military units, and the intelligence and Mukhabarat, or security, services. By some estimates, 330,000 residents of the province -- about 10 percent of the population -- were employed in the Iraqi military or security services.

In an attempt to extend the influence of the Arab nationalist Ba'ath Party over northern Iraq, Sunni Arabs loyal to the regime were moved into the Kurdish neighborhoods on the east bank of the Tigris in the 1970s and 1980s.

After the fall of Hussein, Ba'athists were purged from their dominant positions in the Iraqi military and national and local governments over the objections of some Iraqis who feared that the move would alienate the Sunni minority and deprive the post-Hussein regime of the expertise needed to keep the country functioning.

According to Kurdish intelligence officials with sources in the insurgency, Ba'ath Party officials met at the end of September in the Syrian border town Hasakah, where they elected a new party leader and appointed officials to run operations in every city in Iraq.

The Ba'athists also voted to expel all party members who have worked with American forces, the interim Iraqi government, or the Kurdish political parties, the intelligence sources said.

In Mosul, Pire said, the party is trying to broaden its appeal to traditional Sunni Arab tribes by recruiting the sons of major sheiks.

''The Ba'ath Party has reorganized. They are very popular here," Pire said. ''There is a new, young leadership, mostly from the Mukhabarat and the special military forces."

The Ba'ath Party's role in Mosul contrasts starkly with the insurgency in Fallujah, where locals said that tribal militia commanders and jihadi cells were at the forefront of a loose-knit coalition of militant groups.

In Mosul, said Pire, ''the Ba'ath Party has played the main role in these attacks."

The party has two armed wings in Mosul, the Umm al-Rimah branch, which means mother of all spears, and the Hadbah branch, named for Mosul's old city.

Police defected en masse when insurgents attacked last week. The Iraqi government immediately fired the city's police chief.

According to Kurdish officials, assassins have killed eight Kurds and driven out 30 families from the Arab dominated west bank of the city. The officials believe the Ba'athist leaders and extremists in Mosul want to drive the city's Kurdish minority, about 20 percent of the city's population, into the neighboring provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan.

This week's flash deployment of Peshmerga fighters underscores the Kurds' willingness to fight to protect themselves, even in cities outside the safe zone of the three provinces of Kurdistan.

As soon as the attack on Fallujah started last week, insurgents seized the University of Mosul, once a top Iraqi institution, which has fallen under the sway of Islamic extremists over the last year.

Last Wednesday, the insurgents took over eight police stations. They abandoned three stations after blowing them up. US forces were trying to recapture three more yesterday.

''The insurgents had the full cooperation of the police," Pire said.

When widespread fighting broke out, the two main political parties in the Kurdish provinces just east of Mosul deployed nearly 2,000 of their Peshmerga militia fighters into the city. Pire estimates there are another 6,000 Kurdish ''reserve" fighters in the city.

''The Ba'ath Party is working to create an ethnic civil war," Pire said, as mortar rounds thudded next to his office and his bodyguards rushed to the front gate to return machine gunfire. ''Their plan was first to eliminate police stations, then the Kurdish forces, then finally the Kurdish community."

Some of the Kurdish fighters are operating as Iraqi National Guard, technically under the authority of the Iraqi government, while others wearing the traditional Kurdish dress are fighting as Peshmerga.

After one firefight, Kurdish fighters found in a car used by the insurgents a bloodied knife and a video of militants using it to behead an Iraqi who had worked as an interpreter for Americans.

On Friday and again yesterday Pire's PUK headquarters in Tamim neighborhood was attacked. Insurgents used abandoned houses as firing positions, and in some neighborhoods went door to door asking families for permission to use their roofs to attack Kurdish party offices, said a 46-year-old resident of a mixed Kurdish and Christian neighborhood in eastern Mosul who feared reprisals if his name was published.

Insurgents also sent a messenger to the local priest, threatening to kill him if he didn't demand the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from the city, he said.

''These days, the terrorists are busy in Mosul," the man said.

Yesterday at 1 p.m., just a few miles from the PUK headquarters, four insurgents attacked a satellite Kurdish party office in the Jazair neighborhood.

One man jumped out of the car and opened fire, wounding two Kurdish guards.

In the ensuing firefight, the car exploded, and the gunman was shot in the leg.

He was brought to the PUK headquarters, bleeding from his right thigh, buttocks, and left arm. His blue jeans were soaked with blood, and his beige plaid shirt was torn to reveal a scorpion tattooed on his left shoulder.

Two interrogators stood over him, as he lay on the floor of a narrow concrete room with a bed and desk. He wheezed and shifted on the floor, smearing the puddle of blood beneath him, as he denied any involvement in the attack.

He identified himself as a Mosul local named Mohammed Jassim Al Ta'i, 23, and claimed he was just walking by when he got caught in the crossfire.

One of his interrogators laughed.

''He was the first to shoot at us," the man said.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at tcambanis@globe.com.