MOSUL, Iraq, 29 January 2008 — The situation in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, rocked by blasts blamed on Al-Qaeda, is “worse than imagined,” the defense minister said as troops braced for an assault on the jihadists.
The Iraqi Red Crescent, meanwhile, said the toll from one of the blasts, in which a building was obliterated and about 100 houses destroyed, was higher than reported by the Iraqi authorities, with 60 people killed and 280 wounded.
“The situation in Mosul is worse than imagined by far,” Defense Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed told a news conference late Sunday after touring the flash point city. Speaking at the army’s Nineveh province command center in Mosul, Jassim was highly critical of the Iraqi military’s deployment in Mosul.
“The forces are scattered. We are working to unify the command. The military units are distributed in Mosul in a way that means they haven’t studied the area,” Jassim told reporters. “The 2nd Brigade of the Iraqi army works in the day and withdraws at night, leaving the insurgents free to move. There are many negative things and we must address them,” the minister added.
Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed Al-Askari said on Sunday that military reinforcements, comprising troops, tanks and vehicles, had reached Mosul for a huge offensive against Al-Qaeda. Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki on Friday promised a “decisive battle” against the jihadists in Nineveh province after the devastating blasts.
Meanwhile, influential members of Moqtada Al-Sadr’s movement have urged the anti-US Shiite cleric not to extend a cease-fire when it expires next month, officials said yesterday, a move that could jeopardize recent security gains. Sadr’s August order for his feared Mehdi Army militia to freeze activities for six months was seen by US commanders as a major factor in a nationwide reduction of violence.
But US and Iraqi forces insisted they would continue to hunt down so-called rogue fighters who ignored the order. Sadr’s followers claim this is a pretext to crack down on their movement. Sadr has threatened not to renew the cease-fire unless the government purges “criminal gangs” operating within security forces he claims are targeting his followers.
That was a reference to rival Shiite militiamen from the Badr Brigade who have infiltrated security forces participating in the ongoing crackdown against breakaway militia cells the US has said were linked to Iran. The political commission of Sadr’s movement and some lawmakers and senior officials said they were urging him to follow through with his threat, pointing to recent raids against the movement in the southern Shiite cities of Diwaniyah, Basra and Kerbala.
