US and Iraqi forces launched an offensive in Mosul Tuesday to retake control of rebel-held areas after a week of anarchy with insurgents rampaging through Iraq's third largest city.

"Offensive operations have begun on the western side of the river to clear out final pockets of insurgent fighting," said Captain Angela Bowman, spokeswoman for US forces in the north.

"It's a significant operation to secure police stations in the area and make sure they can be put to use again."

Violence in Mosul was part of a surge in unrest in Sunni areas of Iraq that coincided with a major US assault on the rebel bastion of Falluja. The US military says it has taken control of Falluja, but scattered resistance remains.

US and Iraqi forces met with little rebel resistance in the early stages of the Mosul operation but said a 4 PM to 6 AM curfew would remain in place and that the five bridges over the Tigris in the city were closed, Bowman said.

A few hundred US troops, backed by Iraqi national guards and a unit of police special commandos were involved in yesterday's operation.

Prisoner shot dead

In Falluja, a US Marine shot and killed a wounded and apparently unarmed Iraqi prisoner in a mosque, according to dramatic pool television pictures broadcast on Monday. A Marine spokesman in Washington said the shooting was under investigation.

The shooting Saturday was videotaped by pool correspondent Kevin Sites of NBC television, who said three other previously wounded prisoners in the mosque apparently also had been shot again by the Marines inside the mosque.

On the video, as the camera moved into the mosque during the Saturday incident, a Marine can be heard shouting obscenities in the background, yelling that one of the men was only pretending to be dead.

The video then showed a Marine raising his rifle toward a prisoner lying on the floor of the mosque. The video shown by NBC and provided to the network pool was blacked out at that point and did not show the bullet hitting the man. But a rifle shot could be heard.

The blacked out portion of the video tape, provided later to Associated Press Television News and other members of the network pool, showed the bullet striking the man in the upper body, possibly the head. His blood splatters on the wall behind him and his body goes limp.

Also yesterday, US forces arrested the deputy head of Iraq's interim parliament and a high-ranking member of a Sunni political party after a dawn raid on his Baghdad home, a spokesman from his party said.

Naseer Ayaef, a senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was arrested in his home in the western Jamiah neighborhood despite immunity he enjoys as the deputy speaker of the National Council (Parliament), said the spokesman Iyad al-Samarrai.

Al-Samarrai appealed to Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and National Council President Fouad Maasum to intervene.

The arrest was linked to pressures exerted on the Iraqi Islamic Party because of its opposition to the military offensive against Falluja, stressed the spokesman.

Last week, the Iraqi Islamic Party withdrew from the interim government in protest over the US-Iraqi full-scale assault on Falluja.

US$21 billion stolen

Saddam Hussein's regime reaped over US$21 billion from kickbacks and smuggling before and during the now-defunct United Nations oil-for-food program, twice as much as previous estimates, according to a US Senate probe on Monday.

The monies flowed between 1991 and 2003 through oil surcharges, kickbacks on civilian goods and smuggling directly to willing governments, Senate investigators said at a hearing.

"How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" asked Republican Senator Norm Coleman, head of the investigations subcommittee.

(China Daily November 17, 2004)