Mosul

BAGHDAD -- At least 25 people have been executed gangland-style in Iraq's third-largest city this week, with residents gunned down and bodies found scattered throughout Mosul. Elsewhere, five US troops were killed in operations south and west of Baghdad, the US military said yesterday, and police stormed a farm and freed 17 victims of a factory kidnapping. Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has a mixed Kurdish and Sunni Arab population and a tradition of bad blood. The Kurds, who are largely Sunni Muslim but not Arab, have formed a prosperous autonomous region nearby after decades of oppression and...

BAGHDAD - Two separate attacks against Iraqi security forces killed 3 people and wounded 18 others yesterday, officials said. A bomb in a parked car exploded around noon near an Iraqi army checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, killing a soldier and a bystander, a police officer said. Twelve other passers-by were wounded in the attack. Sunni-dominated Mosul, located 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, was a major haven for Al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent groups several years ago, even as militant activity declined elsewhere.

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's most feared terrorist group claimed responsibility yesterday for slaughtering members of the Iraqi security forces in Mosul, where dozens of bodies have been found. The claim raises fears the group has expanded to the north after the loss of its purported base in Fallujah. Meanwhile, insurgents attacked US and Iraqi targets in Baghdad and in Sunni Arab areas. Also, Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, said sticking to a plan to hold national elections Jan. 30 would be a challenge, but delaying them would bolster the insurgents' cause.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - Not so long ago, Syrians worked to send weapons and fighters into Iraq to help Sunnis fighting a sectarian conflict; suddenly, it is the other way around. A belated celebration of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday on the outskirts of this western Iraqi city on Saturday quickly took on the trappings of a rally for Syria's rebels. Young boys waved the old green, black, and white flag Syria adopted in the 1930s after declaring independence from the French. Others collected money to send aid and weapons to the fighters opposing President Bashar Assad's government across...

MOSUL, Iraq -- A suicide attacker set off a bomb that tore through a funeral tent jammed with Shi'ite mourners yesterday, killing 47 people and wounding more than 100. The explosion, in a working-class neighborhood of this northern city, tore through a large funeral tent pitched next to a smaller one on a grassy patch in the courtyard of the al-Shahidain al-Sadir mosque. Survivors scrambled to get the wounded to a hospital, lugging them to ambulances and cars in blankets or prayer rugs as a strong smell of gunpowder filled the yard.

BAGHDAD - Cars and trucks loaded with suitcases, mattresses, and passengers cradling baskets stuffed with clothes lined up at checkpoints yesterday to flee Mosul, a day after the 10th killing of an Iraqi Christian in the northern city so far this month. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but local leaders have blamed Al Qaeda in Iraq, which maintains influence in the region despite an ongoing US-Iraqi military operation launched in May. The latest victim was a music store owner who was gunned down Sunday evening at work in an attack that injured his...

BAGHDAD - Al Qaeda fighters and other Sunni insurgents have largely scattered from the northern city of Mosul in the face of a US-Iraqi sweep, fleeing to desert areas further south, an Iraqi commander said yesterday. He vowed the forces will not allow them to regroup. The US military said Al Qaeda in Iraq was "off-balance and on the run" but remains a lethal threat, tempering remarks by the US ambassador a day earlier that the terror network was closer than ever to being defeated.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb exploded near a Kurdish party's office yesterday in Mosul, killing at least three Iraqi soldiers as tensions rose in volatile areas north of Baghdad ahead of pivotal elections. Friction between Kurds and Sunni Arabs, as well as Sunnis and Shi'ites, has made northern Iraq a key battleground with just days to go before the vote. Iraqis will choose ruling councils Saturday in most of the country's provinces. The blast in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, occurred near the offices of the Kurdish Democratic Party, or KDP, which is headed by...

BAGHDAD -- A car bomb killed 17 people yesterday and injured 21 others in a mostly Shi'ite Muslim town south of Baghdad, and US troops backed by tanks battled rebels in the northern city of Mosul as the insurgency showed no sign of abating after national elections. Another car bomb exploded in an eastern Baghdad neighborhood as a US convoy passed, killing an Iraqi woman and wounding three others but causing no American casualties, Iraqi police said. The bomb exploded about half a mile from a US Army base.

WATERVILLE, Maine -- Hundreds of mourners singing "God Bless America" paid respects yesterday in the first of two funerals for Mainers killed this month in an explosion in Iraq. A Mass of Christian burial with military honors was said at Notre Dame Church for Staff Sergeant Lynn Poulin. Poulin, 47, of Freedom, and Specialist Thomas Dostie, 20, of Somerville, were among 22 people killed in the explosion at their base dining hall in Mosul on Dec. 21. At the request of Poulin's family, the service included a prayer for those still serving overseas.

BAGHDAD - Less than two months after US troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining US influence in the country. Officials in Baghdad and Washington said that Ambassador James F. Jeffrey and other senior State Department officials are reconsidering the size and scope of the embassy, where the staff has swelled to nearly 16,000 people, mostly contractors. The expansive diplomatic operation and the $750 million embassy building, the largest of its kind in the...

If Army Specialist Corey Shea had been at Mansfield’s South Common yesterday afternoon for the dedication of a new flagpole and monument in his name — to see a crowd including US Representative Barney Frank and Lieutenant Governor Timothy P. Murray gathered in his honor — he might have been a little embarrassed, his mother said. “Corey was very shy,’’ said Denise Anderson, “but I think he would have a smile on his face… . He would have been proud, just as we’re proud of him.’’ Selectman Jess Aptowitz and Mansfield Veterans Agent John Hogan led the efforts to...

KIRKUK, Iraq — Iraqi Christians called off Christmas festivities across the country yesterday as Al Qaeda insurgents threatened more attacks on a beleaguered community still terrified from a bloody siege at a Baghdad church two months earlier. A council representing Christian denominations across Iraq advised its followers to cancel public Christmas celebrations out of concern over new terror attacks and as a show of mourning for the victims of the church siege and other violence.

BAGHDAD — Gunmen stormed into an Iraqi TV reporter’s home in northern Iraq yesterday and shot him to death in front of his parents, police said. Mazin Mardan, 18, was the third employee of the Al-Mousiliyah satellite channel in Mosul to be killed by insurgents. According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 230 media workers have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Also yesterday, the leader of Parliament told lawmakers that Iraq has run out of money to pay for widows’ benefits, crops, and other programs for the poor.

BAGHDAD — Gunmen burst into a home in northern Iraq and killed two Christian men as they sat in their living room, continuing a string of attacks that have spread fear through the dwindling religious minority. In a second strike in the city of Mosul on Monday night, assailants bombed another house belonging to a Christian family, wounding a bystander, police and medical officials said yesterday. Iraq’s Christians are still reeling from an attack last month in which militants stormed a Catholic church in Baghdad during a Sunday Mass.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber wearing an explosives belt killed at least 21 people, mostly Shi’ites, yesterday in a town north of Baghdad, shattering what had been weeks of relative calm, the mayor said. The blast in Balad Ruz emphasized the delicate nature of Iraq’s security gains and occurred as the country is approaches its eighth month without a new government since the March elections. The suicide bomber blew himself up inside a popular cafe, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, as people were gathered to play dominoes and drink tea, said the town’s mayor, Mohammed...

MOSUL, Iraq - The top US commanders in northern Iraq predicted yesterday the battle to oust Al Qaeda in Iraq from its last urban stronghold will not be a swift strike, but rather a grinding campaign for Mosul that will require more firepower from both the Pentagon and Iraqi allies. The statements appeared to discount suggestions by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Iraqi forces were gathering for a "decisive" attack as soon as all reinforcements are in place. "It is not going to be this climactic battle.

BAGHDAD - Nearly 1,000 people have been detained in a sweep to break Al Qaeda in Iraq's sway in the country's third-largest city, Mosul, but many of the other fighters have fled to nearby areas, where troops are hunting for them, Iraqi officials said yesterday. Iraq's leaders presented the crackdown as a success so far in depriving the terror network of what has been its most prominent urban stronghold since it lost hold of cities in Iraq's western Anbar Province. But the flight of Al Qaeda fighters raises the concern they can regroup...

BAGHDAD — A spate of attacks targeting Iraqi security forces and their allies killed at least 10 people yesterday, half in suicide bombings in the northern city of Mosul, officials said. The ability of insurgents to strike against Iraqi police and soldiers has raised worries about the competence of authorities as Iraq takes over its own security ahead of the planned US withdrawal of combat troops by the end of August. Some people fear that militants will take advantage of public anger over the political deadlock following inconclusive March 7 parliamentary elections to stage more...

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq — In words etched in stone, painted on concrete barriers, scribbled on hospital walls with magic markers, American troops in Iraq have followed a tradition as old as war itself: honoring their dead. Now, as the United States prepares to dramatically decrease its military presence in Iraq this summer, American commanders are trying to decide what to do with the vast collection of plaques, street signs, and painted concrete barriers dedicated to the men and women who shed their blood in this desert country.