Rising out from the ashes

[unhappycamper]

U.S. troops with Company B, 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment take up positions outside a house during a raid that targeted a suspected insurgent cell leader in Mosul in northern Iraq.


Rising out from the ashes
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, October 31, 2007


MOSUL, Iraq — A column of U.S. and Iraqi Humvees moved under cover of darkness through the narrow winding streets of Farouk, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mosul’s old city.

The troops were looking for a man known as Abu Bakr, the emir of a local insurgent cell. U.S. soldiers with the 2nd Battalion, 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment had been tracking Bakr for the past nine months.

He pretty much runs Mosul,” said Maj. Mark Reeves, operations officer for the 2-7 Cav, during a pre-mission briefing earlier that night. “He’s been operating here for a long time.”

Word was that Bakr had slipped into Syria weeks earlier but was now back in Mosul.

U.S. forces believed Bakr was staying in Farouk along with an unknown number of foreign fighters. Iraqi forces would lead the raid, with troops from Company B, 2-7 Cav as backup.

~snip~

“The IA (Iraqi army) doesn’t mess around,” Vratny said. “They’re out of the vehicles and gone. Sometimes there’s no waiting around for their American counterparts.”


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49909