Mosul, July 06: A car bomb wounded 10 civilians in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, and gunmen shot dead a traffic policeman, in further violence there after the withdrawal of US troops from cities.
Grenade attacks on Sunday killed a policeman and wounded many other people in what seemed like an attempt by insurgents to take advantage of the US absence to ramp up violence in their last urban holdout.
US forces pulled out Iraq`s towns and cities on June 30, the first step in implementing a bilateral security pact that requires the 130,000 troops currently serving in Iraq to leave before 2012. Iraqi officials have lauded newfound sovereignty.
US commanders had considered retaining presence inside Mosul to beat back a plethora of insurgent groups, including Sunni Islamist al Qaeda, who still operate there after being kicked out of former strongholds in Baghdad and western Iraq.
Mosul is Iraq`s most violent city.
But Iraqi authorities, keen to show the public they are swapping years of US military occupation since the 2003 invasion for sovereignty, rejected that idea.
Many Iraqis doubt whether their own fledgling forces, which have been rebuilt from scratch since the US officials who ran Iraq in 2003 disbanded them, are ready to pacify the country.
The sectarian violence that nearly tore Iraq apart in 2006/7 has ebbed, but militants still carry out frequent attacks.
Bureau Report
