Resistance in Mosul to Be Stepped Up, Islamic Groups Say

Resistance in Mosul to Be Stepped Up, Islamic Groups Say
Rouba Kabbara, Agence France Presse

MOSUL, Iraq, 26 December 2003 — Islamic groups in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul vowed yesterday to step up their resistance to US forces, following the capture earlier this month of their oppressor, Saddam Hussein.

“Now that Saddam has been captured, the Islamic resistance is going to intensify and will become more effective,” warned Sheikh Ali Ussam, a preacher at a mosque in this conservative Sunni town some 400 kilometers north of Baghdad.

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But hey, they're going to dig up a hole and send it to the United States, so all must be right with the world.

<“Until now, operations have been limited to the minimum, to avoid loyalists of the ousted regime taking credit for them,” said 33-year-old Ussam, who is a member of the Union of Muslim Clerics, founded in 1968 but which remained clandestine under the former regime.

“The religious resistance is going to increase now, because the occupiers are becoming more and more aggressive and believe all Iraqis are suspects,” said Sheikh Rayan Khalil, president of Mosul’s Committee of Muslim Clerics which was formed after the fall of Saddam’s regime in April. Khalil said that the guerrillas “are not controlled by the clerics or the mosque imams,” but “act individually.”

“Most of the insurgent operations (so far) in Mosul are the work of elements linked to Saddam...” said Ussam, himself an imam, or preacher. Radical Muslim groups in Mosul distanced themselves from Saddam, despite his No. 2, Izzat Ibrahim — who is still at large and the target of a manhunt by the US-led coalition — alleged to have close ties with a large number of tribal chiefs and imams in Mosul.>

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