BAGHDAD, Iraq – U.S. and Iraqi troops entered Mosul in force Tuesday to retake streets and police stations seized by rebels in the northern city last week, while a leading Iraqi insurgent claimed that the fighting in Fallujah was only the beginning of an uprising that has already roiled parts of Iraq dominated by Sunni Muslims.
“The Americans have opened the gates of hell,” 53-year-old Sunni cleric Sheik Abdullah al-Janabi said Monday in Fallujah, a city U.S. commanders have said they control after a week of often fierce fighting. “The battle of Fallujah is the beginning of other battles.”
After fighting erupted in Fallujah last week, insurgents moved to open a second front in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, seizing control of parts of the city and attacking bridges and six police stations.
On Tuesday, more than 2,500 U.S. troops entered Mosul, where gunfire echoed through rain-soaked streets that were largely deserted on the last day of a three-day Muslim holiday. The city’s five bridges across the Tigris river were closed, and a curfew was imposed from 4 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Residents reported renewed fighting Tuesday in the northern towns of Baiji and Baqouba. In Balad, about 40 miles north of Baghdad, an improvised mine detonated near a convoy, killing a U.S. soldier and injuring another, the military said.
Bursts of gunfire and mortars exploded Tuesday across the battle-scarred city of Fallujah as American forces continued to pursue insurgents. Shooting could be heard for most of the afternoon on the city’s northern edge, where the U.S. military estimated about 100 fighters were still operating.
The U.S. military said it had killed at least 1,200 insurgents and detained hundreds in fighting that destroyed scores of buildings in the conservative, deeply religious city. At least 38 U.S. soldiers and six Iraqi troops have been killed in the offensive.
“Fallujah is no longer a terrorist safe haven,” said Army Gen. George Casey Jr., the top U.S. military commander in Iraq. “That’s a major accomplishment with the Iraqi security forces and for the coalition forces, and it’s a major way ahead for Iraq.”
However, al-Janabi, the insurgent leader, said Monday: “We still have our strength, our force and ammunition, and the battle is long, very long. And we will turn Iraq into one big Fallujah.”
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