BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military deployed armored vehicles in Mosul and infantrymen swept through the northern city Wednesday, a day after an insurgent strike on a nearby base killed 22 people and injured 72 in one of the deadliest attacks on American troops since the war began.
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Mosul's streets were deserted Wednesday as hundreds of troops spread out across several neighborhoods backed up by Bradley fighting vehicles and armored Humvees. An Associated Press reporter in Mosul saw helicopter gunships clattering overhead and jets flying high above the city, located 225 miles north of Baghdad....
Early Wednesday, U.S. troops blocked Mosul's five bridges over the Tigris River that link the western and eastern sectors of the city. The AP reporter saw U.S. soldiers conducting sweeps through the eastern neighborhoods of Muthanna, Wahda and Hadabaa.
In a sign of the of the simmering tensions, most schools in the city were closed and few cars and people could be seen on the streets, although a formal curfew was not declared. Even traffic policemen were not at major intersections as usual.
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There was little apparent sympathy for the dead Americans on Mosul streets Wednesday.
"In fact, what has happened in Mosul yesterday is something expected," said Sattar Jabbar. "When occupiers come to any country (they) find resistance. And this is within Iraqi resistance."
"I prefer that American troops leave the country and go out of cities so that Iraq will be safer and we run its affairs," Jamal Mahmoud, a trade union official. "I wish that 2,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, not 20."
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