Feb

Iraq War Diary: The Battle of Two Mosques, Mosul, 02.12.05

Mosul: five years ago today.

“The Battle of Two Mosques” – This entry in my Iraq War Diary recalls a battle between American troops and insurgent fighters in Mosul, Iraq, on February 12, 2005; five years ago today. I have made just a few, minor grammatical corrections to the original post, which was then password-protected and available only to friends and family. I was working as an embedded photojournalist at the time.

Posted by jim on February 17, 2005 at 12:27:37:

A lot of people have been asking me about the other day, when my captions said I was in a four-hour running gun battle, but I was too tired to write, and it takes a few days to catch up on my rest before I find spare time again. (Today, as it turns out, I have a lot of time because I skipped my mission while recovering from a little knee strain, but it’s no big problem.)

I was sleeping-in because I had a late mission, planning to go out at 11a.m. with the battalion commander on his daily “battlefield circulation,” but at about 0930, he sent a runner to grab me in the hooch. He said they were rolling out in five minutes because another convoy was having “contact,” which means fighting.

Every night, I lay out my previous day’s clothes in case I have to bounce out in a hurry, a habit I still practice at home as well, going all the way back to when I was freelancing spot news in the 80′s.

This way, you’re never tripped up by a missing button; you never forget your belt, etc. You just might smell bad, but it’s usually not about going anywhere nice anyway, and also helps here, where you have to go out to another trailer if you’re an old-timer who might need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

So, I was out of my sleeping bag, or “fart-bag,” as soldiers call them for their remarkable ability to contain noxious fumes all night, and dressed in no time.

At a quick briefing beside the Strykers before we pulled out, I learned that a company convoy had responded to the area where insurgent mortars had just been launched toward another base, and when they got there, they immediately took small arms and RPG fire from the minaret of a mosque.

I don”t even know what part of town we were in, but when we got there and dismounted, nothing looked familiar. It was a medium-wide street but not a big boulevard, with shops on both sides, in mostly two and three-story buildings, so the mosque really stood out above, even though the main building was set back.

I could see that the minaret was damaged, looking like it had taken one or two tanks rounds, and I heard that US troops were trying to get up there to check for bodies, but couldn’t get past rubble on the stairs. Strykers and foot soldiers were everywhere, and there were a couple of tanks down the street.

Columns of smoke were rising from a few places, and I saw that the US troops had blown up a few cars, and that smoke was rising from one other building.

And we ran; back and forth, up and down, block after block, often retracing our steps in the search for insurgent fighters. Our Strykers rolled along right behind us, but it was clear that running dismounted was intended to draw out enemy fire, as well as to respond faster.

As the day unfolded, as we got hit from so many different directions, it became clear that this was a coordinated insurgent attack, and not just a combination of random pot-shots.

I can’t really remember the order of events, but here are some of the other moments I remember:

Somebody spotted people hiding in a pickup truck parked on a side street right in the middle of the battle space, and when they pulled everybody out, they found seven guys crammed inside. Soldiers ordered them to the ground and checked them out, but soon let them go when they proved to be local workers just caught in the middle of the shit.

When soldiers searched one car that had been shot up already, they found two mortar tubes, about 15 mortar rounds, an AK, and some “pineapple” hand grenades, the last being one weapon I had never seen or even heard of being used over here. Not a pretty thought.

I was standing on a corner and had just photographed the tanks, which were compressed in an interesting enough way, but a few seconds after I put down the camera, I heard a boom and saw a big orange fireball, maybe twenty feet in diameter, right against the side of one of them. I thought the tank had fired, but the Sgt. Major yelled “RPG!” and it became clear that they had taken a hit.

I followed soldiers down there on foot, and learned that the tankers had no injuries, but that their engine was disabled by the blast. Next, we pushed block by block in the direction of the RPG fire, with the other tank following along side.

Sometime when I was down a side street, the disabled tank took a second RPG strike, this time setting fire to a mechanical area, so the troops were fine again, but it was billowing smoke now and called for some damage control, which they handled.

While with troops searching the ruins of a building that looked like the sight of a former air strike, I suddenly heard the unmistakable pissing sound of another RPG coming very close. I hit the ground but heard it boom in the distance. I think it was fired at us, but passed high overhead, and I was told that it impacted about 50m away, harmlessly. Insurgents often get the horizontal targeting close, but miss on the vertical, um, fortunately; I’ve had this experience many times now.

We moved in the likely direction of that launch, which led us out to another main street, where shops were still open, and soldiers had to gesture to children, leaving a nearby school with their book bags, to run away fast – and they did.

In the distance, I heard a tank round fired, but never got the details. There were roosters and hens running all over the place all day too. They’re ridiculous little critters.

We could see cars passing on a traffic circle a few blocks away, and soldiers would draw their rifles and wave off anybody coming our way, for all the threats that cars might pose – and every one heeded this time.

Two Kiowa attack helicopters were patrolling low overhead now, and when we were running through an open area. I heard a boom and saw a black puff of smoke right behind one of them, an airburst from a RPG that just missed. I wondered if the weapon could be set to explode in the sky like that, or if it was detonated by the concussion of the rotors, but I never found out. It was a close call either way; very close.

Now, I could hear a fighter jet flying overhead as well, low enough to provide dramatic sonic intimidation, but high enough to avoid ground weapons, and probably out of sight, but there’s no time for gazing, so I really can’t say where it was.

We raided another mosque, which was deserted for the day at least, after a radio report of weapons inside, but I only saw one AK. I was about to follow some guys to the roof when one guy coming down said it was tight up there, so a few soldiers and I stayed in the courtyard.

Not a minute later, I heard AK rounds splattering the wall outside, and then soldiers on the roof returning a huge volley. I got up there too late to make any worthwhile pictures, and learned that they had spotted that shooter in a building about 150m away, but we didn’t run that one down for some reason.

A lot of mosques, some ancient, are getting really fucked up here, but I read recently that Muslims have never shared the Western tradition of religious asylum anyway, and that plenty of mosques were also damaged or destroyed in the Iran-Iraq war, and others. It still makes me feel sad, but less guilty.

Furthermore, I’ve learned that the US ROE, or rules of engagement, have recently been altered, taking away any such protected status from any mosques store weapons, and it’s hard to argue with that logic.

Next, we came upon an Iraqi man, face down, all by himself on an Army stretcher on a street corner. An Army interpreter talked to him and he looked up and answered, and didn’t look so bad, but another soldier said he could hear that the guy was sucking air through a chest wound.

He appeared to be an innocent, but less than brilliant bystander, shot in the crossfire of one of the many small arms exchanges, in through the hip and out through the chest. I heard that he was left on a stretcher by troops from another company who stopped to treat him, but had to leave him and return to the fight when they came under fire again.

Soldiers flagged down a passing car and tried to get the occupants to take the wounded guy to a local hospital, but they refused, leading to a loud, angry argument. Troops were still trying to get the stretcher into the back seat when another soldiers spotted a similarly disagreeable couple of guys in a pickup truck, put the stretcher in the back, and gave them the same orders. They drove off, and that’s the last I know of it.

A moment after, we were walking back to the Strykers when an incoming small arms round hit a building behind us, prompting the Sgt. Major to yell “That’s close!,” and I don’t know if he was referring to the shooter or the impact, or maybe both, but we all hurried to take cover behind the nearest Stryker. They narrowed down the origin enough and returned fire, but nothing came of it.

Finally, we raided a junkyard, where troops had spotted a car that matched a description on one of the shooters. A crowd of men were gathered in the area, but none admitted to driving the car. A worker said it had been parked there all day, but the engine was hot, so we knew he was full of shit, but had nothing more to go on, and there were too many innocent people around to detain everybody, and no extra vehicles to transport them in; so. soldiers just searched the car, came up empty, and left.

The fight had been quiet for a while now, so we headed back to the base as quickly as we had arrived.

Final score: I ran at least three miles, usually one to three blocks at a time, and saw three car fires and two building fires. One tank and one Stryker had been disabled by enemy fire, lots of weapons were recovered, and there were no US casualties. At least nine insurgents were killed.

The soldiers have been calling it all “The Battle of Two Mosques.”

Jim,  Mosul,  021605