US forces struggle to cope with security threat ahead of Iraq vote

US FORCES carried out a series of raids in Iraq’s troubled northern city of Mosul yesterday, as American and Iraqi authorities scrambled to prepare for elections in the face of mass resignations of polling staff and police.

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz acknowledged the security threat to the January 30 election was worse than in last October’s nationwide balloting in Afghanistan and that it was impossible to guarantee “absolute security” against the “extraordinary intimidation that the enemy is undertaking.”

In the Mosul area, the US Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team detained 11 suspected insurgents, including an alleged cell leader, and seized weapons and bomb-making material in several weekend raids - part of the military’s strategy to try to secure the city short of launching an all-out offensive.