BAGHDAD – The number of daily attacks in Mosul has dropped at least 85 percent since U.S.-Iraqi forces began an offensive against Sunni insurgents in the city earlier this month, the top U.S. commander in northern Iraq said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling said U.S. and Iraqi forces have not met fierce resistance since the operation began May 10. He attributed this mostly to the large numbers of troops on the streets, an initial curfew, extensive preparations and construction of new checkpoints.
He said much of the city of 1.9 million people was under control, although three unspecified neighborhoods remain volatile. Attacks in the city have dropped from an average of about 40 per day in the week before the operation began to the current figure of four or six per day, he said.
Iraqi commanders have said some al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters fled before the operation.
But Hertling said he did not believe many had escaped and that some who had been in regions outside Mosul before the crackdown were moving toward the city to take up the battle. He said intelligence indicates “many of their leaders have been pushing fighters to Mosul because they see it as a critical fight as well.”
“We anticipate there will be some attacks by the enemy once they come out of this initial phase of being surprised within the city,” he said at a news conference in Baghdad. “We anticipate that there might be car bombs, suicide vests or things like that.”
The U.S.-Iraqi crackdown in Mosul, which the military has dubbed the last urban stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq, is the latest bid by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to contain rampant violence in Iraq. The two other operations, in the southern city of Basra and in Baghdad's Sadr City district, focused on Shiite extremists.
Hertling said 1,200 suspected militants have been captured in the offensive, with about 200 believed to be members of “terrorist organizations.”
