U.S. army says Mosul blast resulted from suicide bombing

NINEWA/IraqiNews.com: A media advisor for U.S army on Sunday said Mosul’s blast caused by a suicide bombing that went off when American military forces stormed a house in Ninewa province. “Eleven individuals including three children and three women were killed when a suicide bomber detonated himself inside a house stormed by U.S. military,” al-Muqdad Jibrael, a media advisor for the Multi-National Force (MNF), told IraqiNews.com. “The suicide bomber blew himself up when U.S military tried to storm the house in which three terrorist were holing up, leaving all killed except for two children”, the advisor noted. Jibrael did not elaborate further details about the bombing nor did he clarify the link between the gunmen and the house residents. Earlier, the advisor said the U.S. troops killed 11 people from one family while they were conducting a dawn raid on a house in 17 Tammuz (July) neighborhood, western Mosul.  The source explained Iraqi army forces delivered the bodies, which had been placed in nylon bags by the U.S. forces, to the morgue in Mosul city. The Iraqi army is currently attending to a three-year-old child from the same family who has survived, while police forces are taking care of a three-month-old baby. Mosul, the provincial capital of Ninewa, 400 km north Baghdad, is viewed by U.S. and Iraqi authorities as one of the last remaining al-Qaida strongholds in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered a two-phase military crackdown in the northern city in May. Ninewa officials said the gains from these operations, however, have disintegrated as militant groups re-entered the city there due to an insufficient number of Iraqi troops to maintain security following operations in May. AM(S) 1