Iraq moves troops and tanks to northern city Mosul

Mosul: The central government in Baghdad started to send more military forces to Nineveh province in preparations for a massive military operation in the area against Al Qaida, Iraqi officials told Gulf News.

The government, they added, also requested Americans to deploy more troops in Mosul to participate in the operation.

Khisro Guran, deputy governor of Nineveh, told Gulf News thousands of Al Qaida gunmen, Baathists and other extremist groups have gathered in Mosul, which "has worsened the deterioration of the security situation".

"I believe that the security situation had worsened because more Baathists and Al Qaida gunmen have entered the province from Baghdad and Diyala. They escaped under the increasing security pressure and thus I am certain that the battle in Mosul will be final and decisive for Al Qaida's existence in the whole of Iraq".

He expected that the next battle against Al Qaida in Mosul will take place soon and it would be from "one alley to another especially in old neighbourhoods where Al Qaida members are residing because of its narrow alleys".

Plans for a decisive battle against Al Qaida in Mosul coincided with another ongoing operation in Samera, to the north of Baghdad. The operation, which started last week, also targets Al Qaida.

Nineveh province is inhabited by three million citizens- the majority of whom are Arabs and Kurds. The province has diverse ethnic and sectarian groups besides the existence of other minorities as Yazidis, Sabians and Christians.

Zuhair Al Faidhi, an Iraqi political researcher in Mosul, told Gulf News: "Mosul may turn into another Fallujah, ... where US army had launched a broad and devastating military operation in 2004. This means the havoc ratio will be frightening and the numbers of refugees who would leave Mosul will require an enormous humanitarian alert. I think the battle that Iraqi officials are talking about will be catastrophic due to the great number of Al Qaida gunmen."

Unlike other Iraqi cities, gunmen exist in the centre of Mosul and not in its countrysides, outskirts and suburbs. Rassim Al Jibouri, an officer in the Iraqi army, told Gulf News: "The battle in Mosul will be gruesome because our information indicates that Al Qaida may have sophisticated weapons and huge quantity of explosives. Besides many suicide bombers are in Mosul now. This means that the military confrontation will be fierce between Al Qaida and the joint Iraqi-American forces".

According to what security sources in the Iraqi military command revealed to Gulf News, more than 80 per cent of foreign gunmen infiltrations take place in Iraqi-Syrian borders close to Nineveh and most suicide bombers are located in Mosul.