U.S. and Iraqi forces stormed police stations in Mosul on Tuesday, launching an offensive to retake parts of this northern Iraqi city, where Iraqi resistance fighters carried out many attacks on governmental buildings in support of Fallujah residents.
According to The AP, Mosul's five bridges were closed to begin the raid and US occupation troops started securing police stations in the western part of the city.
Over 1,000 American troops participated in the attack to recapture more than 10 police stations abandoned by Iraqi forces.
On Tuesday, locals reported U.S. warplanes and helicopters hovering over Mosul as huge blasts and gunfire were heard near the American base on the northern edge of the city.
On Monday, a suicide bomber detonated his vehicle near an American military convoy in the western part of Mosul, wounding five U.S. soldiers. A second car then tried to approach the same patrol, but the troops opened fire, killing the driver.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military was investigating videotaped pool pictures taken Saturday by NBC that showed a U.S. Marine shooting dead an injured Iraqi captive in a mosque in Fallujah.
On the video, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men against the wall in the mosque was only pretending to be dead. It then briefly shows a Marine raising his weapon toward one of the prisoners. Then the gunfire can be heard.
On Tuesday, the U.S. military said in a statement that the 1st Marine Division is investigating an allegation of the unlawful use of force in the death of an "enemy combatant" in Fallujah.
In Baghdad, U.S. forces arrested a senior member of an influential Sunni political party Tuesday after a dawn raid on his home, party officials said.
Naseer Ayaef, a high-ranking member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was taken into custody in the northwestern Jamiah neighborhood after the party voiced opposition to the U.S.-led offensive on Fallujah, party official Ayad al-Samarrai told The Associated Press. (albawaba.com)
