"The city is a mess," said Bahaa Aldeen Abdulaziz, owner of the Casablanca Hotel. "The shops are closed. There's no security. And the reason for all this is because the Americans invaded Fallujah.
"And Fallujah will never finish. It has gotten into people's blood."
Iraqi youth climb over several destroyed vehicles in the town of Buhruz, a few kilometers from the city of Baquba in Iraq.
(Ali Yussef - AFP)
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"I believe the situation will continue like this, and Mosul will become another Fallujah," said Noofel Mohammed Amen, a shoe salesman. "And later on all the cities of Iraq will be Fallujah."
The most immediate concern for the interim government is manpower. Iraq has no more than eight battalions of the newly trained troops, whose main job is to occupy cities after U.S. forces defeat insurgents. Duty in Samarra and Fallujah, which have about half a million people between them, was already stretching that force thin. Adding duty in Mosul "means you're operating right out on the edge of what forces you have -- Iraqi forces," the U.S. official said.
American forces may be stretched thin as well. A battalion deployed outside Fallujah raced back to its Mosul base when insurgents struck, attacking in groups as large as 50 at a time, numbers not previously seen in the city, said Lt. Col. Paul Hastings of Task Force Olympia, the brigade that in February replaced a much larger unit, the 101st Airborne Division.
The magnitude of the Mosul assault generated a wave of excited reports that officials feared would further undermine public order elsewhere in Iraq. The city's governor went on state television to attack "lies" on Arabic-language satellite news channels, which at one point reported that U.S. forces had evacuated one of their main bases. On Sunday, the interim Interior Ministry issued a statement denying that insurgents had overrun two police stations in northern Baghdad.
The news was not all bad for the government. Also Sunday, Najaf buzzed with the news that local tribesmen had carried out three days of devastating attacks in the town of Latifiyah. Located on the exceedingly dangerous road between Baghdad and Najaf, the town harbors extremists blamed for killing 18 young Iraqi men returning from Najaf after signing up for the National Guard earlier this month. The victims' tribal leaders, incensed after extremists demanded payment before handing over the bodies, last week sent fighters north to burn farms and carry out revenge killings, officials in Najaf said.
But in the Sunni Triangle west and north of Baghdad, the insurgency regularly demonstrates its resilience. In Samarra, local insurgents and foreign fighters driven from the city Oct. 1 began trickling back a month later. A wave of car bombs and mortar attacks Nov. 6 killed 17 Iraqi police and made the city a combat zone once more.
Residents assembled each day at the bridge leading from the main highway across the Tigris River into town, shut down by U.S. forces.
"It is our fault," said Abu Muhammed, stranded on the wrong side. "We sold the city to those terrorists and let them enter, and now we cannot enter because of them."
"They made it hard to live till the army came and freed the city," said another man, who gave his name as Abu Omar. "We were able to move around freely and stay out late at night. But now they are back."
In another development Monday, the military announced the death of a soldier in Baghdad as the result of a military vehicle accident.
Special correspondents Naseer Nouri near Samarra and Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
