Mosul boils, Police chief killed as US troops drawn off.

3,500 troops from the U.S.'s 172nd Stryker Brigade have just been pulled out of Mosul to reinforce security operations in Baghdad. The 172nd deployed to Iraq in August 2005 and the bulk of the unit was due to return to Fort Wainwright, Alaska, early this month. On July 27 the Pentagon said that it was extending the 172nd’s deployment for up to 120 days and moving the unit to Baghdad (Btown in military slang) to counter the worsening violence in the Iraqi capital.

More than 80 Strykers had already been deployed to Alaska and their return has been requested. Many of those still in Iraq were within a day or two of leaving. Stryker crews had celebrated their last missions “outside the wire.” 12 US servicement were killed in Anbar province last week, where the Strykers were deployed .

Today Colonel Jassim Muhammad Bilal a police battalion commander,and two bodyguards were killed of a total of 9 police reported killed, in the blast from a car bomb (one of several). Heavy clashes between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces were reported in the city by Iraqi Police and the office of Nineveh Governor Duraid Kashmoula ."Bomby weather" as they say of Fridays in Iraq.

Mosul authorities have also ordered everyone off the streets until Saturday and closed the city's bridges across the Tigris river.