DAR AL ISLAM - IRAQ: MOSQUES = JIHAD PLANNING & STAGING CENTERS...MOSQUES IN AMERICA WILL BE USED IN THE SAME WAY WHEN THE TIME COMES

Five U.S. soldiers killed by bomb as insurgents attack from mosque
Iraqi soldiers take on al-Qaida in Mosul
By Kim Gamel and Qassim Abdul-Zahra


BAGHDAD -- In a daring ambush, insurgents blasted a U.S. patrol with a roadside bomb yesterday and showered survivors with gunfire from a mosque in increasingly lawless Mosul. Five U.S. soldiers were killed in the explosion -- even as Iraqi troops moved into the northern city to challenge al-Qaida in Iraq.

Iraqi reinforcements, along with helicopters, tanks and armored vehicles, converged on Mosul for what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pledged would be a decisive battle against al-Qaida in its last major urban stronghold.

The attack on the U.S. patrol -- the deadliest against American forces since six soldiers died Jan. 9 in a booby-trapped house north of Baghdad -- raised the Pentagon's January death count to at least 36.

The toll so far is 56 percent higher than December's 23 U.S. military deaths and marks the first monthly increase since August. But the figures remain well below monthly death tolls of more than 100 last spring.

The attackers yesterday struck in Mosul's southeastern Sumar neighborhood, a middle-class district popular with former officers in Saddam Hussein's military and now a suspected hotbed for the insurgency.

After the roadside bomb exploded, gunmen opened fire from a mosque. A fierce gunbattle erupted as U.S. and Iraqi soldiers secured the area, the military said. Iraqi troops entered the mosque, but the insurgents had fled, according to a statement.

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1) Five U.S. soldiers killed by bomb as insurgents attack from mosque