Entangled Triangle
U.S. Captain Angela Bowman described Mosul as calmer overnight, with its three million residents under a dusk-to-dawn curfew. U.S. planes staged air strikes on Mosul after dark on Thursday to try to restore order, bombing rebel positions.
A U.S. soldier was killed in an ambush in a southern Baghdad neighborhood, and a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was brought down by ground fire northeast of Baghdad, injuring three of the four-man crew, the U.S. military said.
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - A semblance of calm returned to Mosul on Friday after U.S. forces carried out air strikes on insurgents, but residents said Iraq's third largest city remained tense and Iraqi police were nowhere to be seen.
U.S. war planes struck rebel areas in the southwest of the city late on Thursday after two days of widespread violence in which groups of insurgents rampaged, burning police stations, stealing weapons and tipping the city toward chaos.
He said insurgents remained in charge of at least one of the nine police stations attacked and set ablaze on Wednesday and Thursday. Some residents suggested that many police had taken off their uniforms and decided to join the insurgents.
Mosul's governor imposed an immediate curfew on Wednesday as the northern city of three million people exploded in violence.
In the past four days, there has been a step up in violence across the Sunni Muslim heartland of the country, including the towns Baquba, Samarra, Tikrit, Ramadi and parts of Baghdad.
In the past three days, there has been a step up in guerrilla activity in Samarra, Baiji, Baquba, Tikrit, Ramadi and parts of Baghdad - across the Sunni Muslim heartland.
MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) - A top police officer and two guards were killed in Mosul as US troops battled to restore order in Iraq 's third city, where gunmen roamed the streets in response to a US-led assault on Fallujah.
Violence also flared in other predominantly Sunni Arab areas, following the major offensive on the rebel Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, which started on Monday and rumbled on into Friday night.
In snapshots of the unrest, three crew were injured when a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down, at least five Iraqis were killed in clashes in Hawijah, a US soldier was shot dead in Baghdad and a local leader was ambushed in the restive province of Al-Anbar, home to battle-torn Fallujah.
But militants have taken the battle elsewhere, with an AFP reporter saying truck loads of gunmen have entered Mosul, 370 kilometres (230 miles) north of Baghdad, and were roaming the streets.
"We want to open a new front to alleviate the pressure on Fallujah," one of the rebels told AFP, declining to give his name.
Masked men took the place of police around Mosul, standing guard outside banks and the university, the AFP reporter said. But Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings, the US military spokesman in the city, insisted that the situation was under control. The "governor is actively involved in restoring police presence and is in control of the security situation in the city," he told AFP in an email.
Deadly clashes earlier in the week prompted the US military to unleash air and ground strikes on the city Thursday. In addition, Muwaffak Mohammed Dahlam, the head of the anti-criminal division, was shot dead along with two guards by armed men who torched his home in Mosul, a police spokesman said.
In Hawijah, an unruly town 210 kilometres (130 miles) north of Baghdad and part of the so-called Sunni-triangle, five Iraqis were killed and six wounded when rebels clashed with Iraq and US forces, police said. "We do not know if the dead are civilians or rebels," a spokesman said.
Also inside the notorious triangle, which spans Al-Anbar, the head of the small town of Rutba, Hussein al-Kuseissi, was gunned down while driving alone on Thursday evening, a police officer said Friday.
In Ramadi, Al-Anbar's provincial capital, US troops mounted a massive dawn sweep, detaining dozens of suspected insurgents, an AFP correspondent said. Marines surrounded the central Bu Alwan and Jamiya districts, and took up positions along the main road to the provincial governor's office. Rebels angered by a massive five-day US and Iraqi offensive on their bastion of Fallujah have deployed in force in Ramadi since Wednesday.
Baghdad suffered its share of bloodshed, as a US soldier was killed when rebels raked a patrol with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Two other soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter were wounded. Three crew member of a Black Hawk were injured northeast of the capital when their helicopter was shot down by insurgents, the US military said.
US and Iraqi security forces and all other symbols of the US-backed government are prime targets in a potent insurgency that has raged since the aftermath of last year's invasion. Three police checkpoints were attacked and set ablaze along the road linking Iraq's northern oil city of Kirkuk with Tikrit. Also in Tikrit, four civilians were killed when a roadside bomb exploded in the path of their car, while insurgents in Baiji blasted mortar rounds on police and national guard stations, despite a curfew.
Separately, police killed one rebel and captured three others following clashes against the police and national guards in the restive city of Baquba, 60 kilometres (36 miles) northeast of the Iraqi capital, police said. Elsewhere, and a Turkish truck driver, identified as Abu Omran, was shot dead and his truck torched in Balad, 75 kilometres (47 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
Washington, DC, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Three U.S. soldiers were wounded Friday when their Blackhawk helicopter was shot down northeast of Baghdad at 4:30 p.m. local time Friday, Central Command said. The UH-60 carried four soldiers. The fate of the fourth was not immediately known, and the extent of the injuries of the three was not specified.
Violence also erupted between insurgents and US and Iraqi forces in the majority Sunni town of Baiji, 200 kilometres (130 miles) north of Baghdad, leaving 10 people dead and 26 injured, and resulting in another curfew.
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