An Al-Qaeda front group for northern Iraq said in a statement posted yesterday on the Internet that it was launching its own campaign in the northern city of Mosul and urged volunteers to join them to carry out suicide attacks on US troops, Iraqi Shiites and the Kurdish peshmerga troops.The statement followed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's announced campaign in Mosul to root out Al-Qaeda in Iraq led insurgents said to have taken refuge there. Al-Maliki has said the Mosul campaign would be the final showdown with the terror network in its last urban stronghold in Iraq. The Sunni militant group, known as Mosul's regional command of the Islamic State of Iraq, said their own campaign would be a "vengeance raid," but provided no details.
The statement, posted on a Web site commonly used by insurgents, urged volunteers to stage suicide attacks against "foreign crusaders" - shorthand for US troops - as well as Iraqi Shiites and the Kurdish government forces known as the peshmerga in the Kurdish-run north of the country.
We announce the good news to our people that we have started a military campaign ... which will continue until we reap its good results," read the statement. "We also announce accepting volunteers for martyrdom operations against the occupying crusaders in general and against the Peshmerga and the Shiites in particular.
Referring to al-Maliki's promised showdown, it talked about "a conspiracy hatched against the people of Mosul ... by the occupiers, their followers from the Kurdish peshmerga militia traitors and the Shiites in Baghdad." It mentioned the loss of "our loved ones in Zanjili" - a reference to an explosion last month in an abandoned apartment building in the impoverished Mosul district of Zanjili, reputed to be an Al-Qaeda hotbed. The blast killed 60 people and wounded more than 200, spiking tensions in this c
ity, which is Iraq's third largest, located about 360 kilometers northwest of Baghdad.
Iraqi authorities have blamed Al-Qaeda for the attack in a poor neighborhood of stone houses - 50 were obliterated. The Zanjili district was populated by men who worked as porters and sold gas cooking cylinders house to house and were said to be strong Al-Qaeda sympathizers.
Al-Qaeda is believed to have a strong presence in Mosul, which lies on transport crossroads between Baghdad, Syria and other points, and has a religiously mixed population that has not seen the groundswell of Sunni anger against militants that has helped turn the tide in Anbar province and other areas. US commanders in northern Iraq have warned that the battle to oust Al-Qaeda from Mosul will not be a swift strike as Al-Maliki suggested, but rather a grinding campaign that will require more firepower.