By Khalid al-Ansary and Waleed Ibrahim
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki flew tothe northern city of Mosul on Wednesday to oversee a bigoffensive against al Qaeda in what the U.S. military says isthe group's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.
Iraqi military officials hope the operation will deliver aknockout blow to Sunni Islamist al Qaeda militants in northernIraq. The campaign, which is being led by Iraqi securityforces, commenced on Saturday.
"This operation will purge Mosul of criminal and terroristgangs and end the suffering they have brought to people,"Maliki said in a statement.
Iraqi military officials said some 500 suspected insurgentshad been detained in raids in Mosul and surrounding Ninevehprovince so far. Vehicle curfews have been imposed.
Al Qaeda militants have regrouped in Nineveh after beingpushed out of Baghdad and their former stronghold of westernAnbar province by U.S. and Iraqi forces in the past year.
It was unclear how long Maliki would stay in Mosul, but hisvisit resembles one he made to the southern oil city of Basrain late March to supervise a crackdown on Shi'ite militiasthere.
That offensive caught U.S. officials in Baghdad off-guardand got off to a rocky start when the Mehdi Army militia ofShi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr put up fierce resistance.
Iraqi troops had to quickly call for U.S. air and groundsupport. Around 1,000 Iraqi soldiers also deserted.
While Iraqi troops took control of Basra within a week,fighting spread to Baghdad and has continued despite a dealbetween Sadr's opposition movement in parliament and the rulingShi'ite alliance over the weekend to end the violence.
Maliki, himself a Shi'ite, won praise in Washington andsupport from politicians across Iraqi's ethnic and sectariandivide for cracking down on Shi'ite militias.
IRAQ FORCES CAN "HANDLE" SECURITY
Hussein al-Falluji, a legislator from the main Sunni Arabbloc, which withdrew from Maliki's government last year, saidthe Mosul offensive showed Iraq could rely less on U.S. forces.
"This operation carries a message to many parties insideand outside Iraq ... to show that the Iraqi forces are able tohandle security," Falluji told Reuters.
"The prime minister is the commander in chief, therefore hewants to send this message."
The U.S. military said the Mosul campaign was Iraqi-plannedand Iraqi-led but being closely supported by American units.
U.S. officials blame al Qaeda in Iraq for most big bombingsin the country, including an attack on a Shi'ite shrine inSamarra in February 2006 that set off a wave of sectariankillings that nearly tipped Iraq into all-out civil war.
The build-up of U.S. troops last year and support fromSunni Arab tribes that turned against al Qaeda allowed themilitary to conduct a series of offensives that largely pushedthe militants into northern areas, including Nineveh.
However, U.S. commanders say al Qaeda in Iraq, althoughweakened, can still carry out large-scale attacks.
Another legislator said the offensive against al Qaedawould help Maliki show he was trying to tackle Iraq's manyproblems.
"Maliki's presence there ... shows he is dealing with allIraqi provinces equally," said Jabr Habeeb, an independentmember of the ruling Shi'ite alliance.
The U.S. military announced this month that improvedsecurity in Iraq meant the military could go ahead and drawdown the third of the five extra combat brigades that U.S.President George W. Bush sent to Iraq last year in a bid tohalt Iraq's slide into civil war.
The redeployment is part of a wider plan to withdraw thefive "surge brigades", or 20,000 troops, by the end of July.That will still leave some 140,000 American soldiers in Iraq.
(Additional reporting by Tim Cocks, Wisam Mohammed andAseel Kami, Writing by Tim Cocks and Dean Yates)
