BAGHDAD, 30 December 2004 — Pitched battles between US troops and Iraqi insurgents in strife-torn Mosul left 25 dead yesterday and another 30 people were killed when a Baghdad house rigged with explosives blew up during a police raid.
Despite the volatile security situation, US President George W. Bush insisted Iraq’s landmark national elections must go ahead, while a hard-line militant group reiterated its intention to cause bloodshed on the Jan. 30 polling day.
Apparently lured into a trap, police raided a home in Baghdad’s squalid western Ghazaliya district late Tuesday, and were still inside when a massive blast leveled the house, an Interior Ministry official said.
Thirty people died, six of them police, the ministry said. Another 25 were wounded, including four policemen, and four police were listed as missing.
Officials said a Sudanese drew them toward the house by firing at neighbors. However, a witness said the man had actually threatened to blow up the home if police entered.
In Mosul, insurgents detonated car bombs against a US patrol and a combat outpost and then about 50 fighters launched an assault on the outpost, firing small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, the military said.
US forces called in airstrikes and at least 25 insurgents were killed, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings. Masked gunmen were seen running down Mosul’s deserted streets, firing off guns and rocket-propelled grenades, as a column of smoke shot up into the sky.
Violence has paralyzed the city of 1.5 million people, where US forces are expected to increase their numbers ahead of the Jan. 30 elections for an Iraqi national Parliament.
As the clock ticks down to the election, doubts loom over whether US and Iraqi forces can pacify cities like Mosul, a bastion of the Sunni minority whose alienation from the US-backed political order is fueling the lethal insurgency.
