By Xinhua,
Mosul, Iraq : A bomb attack targeted a U.S. foot patrol in Iraq’s northern city of Mosul on Saturday, killing two Iraqi civilians and wounding three U.S. soldiers, a local police source said.
The attack occurred when a gunman threw a hand grenade on the soldiers in a popular marketplace in Nabi Younis neighborhood in eastern the city of Mosul, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. troops immediately cordoned off the scene to secure the area and evacuated the casualties, the source said.
The U.S. military did not confirm the incident yet.
The attack came as the U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces are carrying out major offensive in Nineveh province and its capital Mosul to uproot al-Qaida militants in the province where they were believed to be regrouped after being defeated in Baghdad and other Iraqi provinces.
Abdul Kareem Khalaf, Interior Ministry spokesman, said that the Iraqi troops in Mosul have succeeded in dismantling al-Qaida network in Nineveh province and that a total of 1,480 people have been detained, 300 of them were wanted, since the operation “Mother of Two Springs” begun earlier in the month.
“The operation in Nineveh has enabled us to dismantle and weaken the al-Qaida network in the province,” Khalaf told reporters in Mosul.
Earlier, an Iraqi security source in Nineveh’s office of operations told Xinhua that up to 180 detainees have been released on Friday.