20 November 2004	Saturday	07 Shawwal 1425

BAGHDAD, Nov 19: Four Iraqis were killed and nine wounded when Iraqi National Guards backed by US troops stormed a mosque in Baghdad after Friday prayers. Three more people died in the capital when a car bomb went off near a police patrol.

Hundreds of Iraqi troops stormed the Abu Hanifa mosque in the mainly Sunni district of Aadhamiya, firing percussion grenades and damaging the doors, the Muslim Clerics Association said.

It said they opened fire when furious worshippers began to chant "Allahu Akbar" and tried to beat back troops. Four civilians were killed and nine wounded. Around 17 were detained.

US military vehicles surrounded the mosque but only Iraqi forces initially entered the grounds, witnesses said. They were followed by Americans, who shut the doors of the main building but did not appear to have entered, they added.

The objective of the raid was not immediately clear. During his sermon, the mosque imam had charged that after their onslaught on Fallujah, US forces would turn their attention to Latifiyah, another Sunni stronghold immediately south of the capital that lies at the heart of a region dubbed the Triangle of Death.

Occupation forces have stormed at least two mosques in recent weeks and detained religious figures critical of the offensive against the western town of Fallujah. The Muslim Clerics Association, some of whose own officials have been arrested, condemned the storming of Abu Hanifa mosque and other raids by US.-led forces on Iraqi places of worship.

COMMANDOS STORM MOSUL: Hundreds of Iraqi commandos stormed into the historic heart of the main northern city of Mosul on Friday. Piled into dozens of white pickups trucks, the 400 heavily armed soldiers were tasked with raiding a suspected meeting place of militants deep inside the old quarter's maze of alleyways, amid expectations of a major US-backed assault on militant strongholds in Mosul.

Last week, guerillas went on the offensive in the city, overrunning several police stations and ransacking others. US commanders said up to 100 militants were thought to be in the old quarter, among them several leaders, and that the aim of the operation was to draw them out into the open.

"We are finding the (militant) pockets with Iraqis, and going and asking them to come out and fight," said Colonel Robert Brown, the US military commander in Mosul.

"Every time they fight, we will kill a lot of them." The imminent showdown followed days of unrest in the city of more than a million people which has left at least 20 Iraqi security personnel and a US soldier dead, along with more than 50 guerillas, according to a US toll.

The violence was part of a flare-up across the "Sunni belt" following a massive US-led offensive on Fallujah on Nov 8. Northeast of Mosul, a car bomb narrowly missed a US convoy but there were no immediate reports of casualties. -Reuters/AFP