Mosul – The city General Petraeus cleaned up and used as the model  for how to deal with counter insurgency – Has fallen.

“Mosul now is like hell. It’s up in flames,” said Amina Ibrahim, who like many others was heading for northern Iraq’s more stable Kurdish-controlled zone. “I lost my husband in a bomb blast last year, I don’t want my kids to follow him.”

IRAQ – Militants storm northern city of Mosul, freeing thousands of prisoners, as Iraqi prime minister declares state of emergency and offers to arm citizens who volunteer to fight against militants Al-Qaeda seized control of Iraq’s third biggest city on Tuesday, freeing thousands of imprisoned fellow fighters in a series of jailbreaks and sparking a mass exodus of refugees.

The assault on the city of Mosul, 225 miles north west of Baghdad, saw the Iraqi army retreat to the outskirts after a sustained assault by men armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. As well as seizing the main governorate building – forcing the city’s governor to flee – the gunmen were also reported to have gained control of three different jails, numerous police stations and an airport, where several military planes and helicopters were based.

The loss of the city, home to around one million people, is potentially a huge challenge to the Iraqi government, which has been struggling to quell a regalvanised al-Qaeda insurgency for more than two years. Related Articles As residents fled in their thousands, they spoke of seeing militants raising al-Qaeda’s black flag from buildings, and of newly-released prisoners running through the streets in yellow jumpsuits.

“Mosul now is like hell. It’s up in flames,” said Amina Ibrahim, who like many others was heading for northern Iraq’s more stable Kurdish-controlled zone. “I lost my husband in a bomb blast last year, I don’t want my kids to follow him.”

U.S. Trained Iraqi troops  strip off their uniforms and flee from al-Qaeda

The militants are believed to be from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the joint Iraqi-Syrian al-Qaida affiliate that is also fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in neighbouring Syria. Seizing control of Mosul, which lies on a stretch of the Tigris less than 100 miles from the Syrian border, would help the group in its aim of carving out a swathe of uncontested territory straddling the two borders.

While the exact picture in Mosul was still confused on Tuesday because of the ongoing fighting, the militants appeared to have made significant ground in routing Iraqi security forces, some of whom were filmed being pelted with rocks as they pulled out of the city.

“The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants,” an interior ministry official told the Agence France Presse news agency, saying soldiers had fled after removing their uniforms. (continue reading)

U.S. Major Mark Bieger holding an infant girl (Fatah) wrapped in blankets.   She was a victim of an al-Qaeda car bomb attack, Mosul, 2005. Photograph © Michael Yon.  She died from her injuries