Iraqi military resilient against al-Qaida

MOSUL, Iraq, May 22 (UPI) -- The Iraqi armed forces' taking on Sunni insurgents in Mosul was a show of strength in one of the last remaining al-Qaida strongholds, officials say.

Al-Qaida and other Sunni fighters fled to northern Iraq following U.S. and Iraqi efforts to secure Anbar province, Baghdad and other areas. Analysts consider it one of the remaining holdouts of al-Qaida fighters in Iraq.

Iraqi forces raided Mosul starting May 10 in an operation to root out 400 suspects on an Iraqi government list of wanted insurgents.

Since Sunday, the Iraqi army arrested more than 1,000 people throughout the northern province of Nineveh. Iraqi military forces swept most of the neighborhoods in the provincial capital Mosul by Thursday, searching nearly every house, Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the U.S. Armed Forces, said.

The plan, much like earlier operations in Basra and Wednesday's raid on Baghdad's Sadr City, was coordinated and conducted with little or no help from the U.S. military. Unidentified U.S. officials told Stars and Stripes they were unaware of the operation until the day before it was launched, though Iraqi media reports had been commenting on a pending operation in Mosul for some time.

Iraqi forces encountered little resistance, though one Iraqi military officer said he suspected militants fled the area on word of a major operation.

"So far it's good, but I think the most important bad-guy leaders, they knew that something was coming," said Iraqi officer Maj. Kawa Tahir.