IRAQ: In Mosul US troops are dealing with a reorganised enemy, reports Jack Fairweather.
There's a body lying by the side of the street. Behind the corpse, zipped up in a body bag, is a cargo truck with its windscreen dotted with bullet holes.
The man was shot by B company, Deuce-4 battalion as they were ambushed uncovering explosives by the side of the road on the western edge of Mosul.
They think he was just a truck-driver, but they're not sure. Another soldier's shouting that he can see Iraqis running for cover.
Somewhere between the residential houses gun shots ring out. The ambushers are still out there.
There is a war being fought in Mosul. It's not the pitched-battle seen last month in Fallujah when insurgents stood, fought and were soundly beaten.
This is the violent and terrifying world of Iraq's insurgency, where the enemy fades in and out of the local population, untraceable until they strike. It shows no signs of abating.
"What they're dealing with now is an insurgency gone to ground, reorganising, and looking its next base of operations," said a senior American diplomat in Baghdad.
The US military believes hundreds of insurgents fled Fallujah, most before the fighting began. They include Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, terrorist ringleader, America's most wanted, who US intelligence reports indicate came to the Mosul area of northern Iraq with the fighting still raging in Fallujah.
His influence, and that of other escaped insurgents, was devastating.
On November 23rd teams of insurgents stormed five police stations in the city, torching them, before handing them over to looters. A recently completed Iraqi army base to the south of the city was left a gutted wreck in a further attack.
US army units were rushed northwards to contain the violence, but most of the damage had been done.
For the past month the Iraqi police force has refused to go back to work. Many Iraqi contractors have stopped work on American contracts for the city's meagre reconstruction projects.
For a city, Iraq's third largest, that once prided itself on its ethnic mix of Sunni Arabs, Christians and Kurds, there have been worrying attacks on churches and Kurdish political offices.
The US military now has a 5,000-strong force in Mosul, the largest since the war, and is the de facto government in the city where many Iraqi leaders have disappeared from view. The military says its focus is to prepare the city for elections next month by recreating confidence in civic leadership, but much of its time is spent countering the daily assaults of the insurgents.
"We know that elections are our ticket out of here. But first we've got to bring security to the area," said one senior officer.
US officers are confident, despite the increased insurgency, they can do this in time. "To break this insurgency what we need is intelligence, and to get that we need to win the trust of the Iraqi people," said Lt Col Eric Kurilla, commander of the 8,000-strong Deuce-4 battalion, which bares the brunt of the attacks in western Mosul, the Sunni Arab Yarmuk district.
Lt Col Kurilla embodies the American fight against the insurgency, and its inherent contradictions: brilliant in attack, but unable to convince locals that the US presence and elections will make their lives better.
He is a great bear of a man, loved by his soldiers and spends most of his day touring the battle space "looking for a fight" as he puts it - the tried and trusted method for weeding out insurgents. Visiting "B company" a few hours after they were ambushed, he trotted eagerly around the pitted streets. "Scusi," he shouted at an Iraqi girl standing on a balcony, before asking his translator to ask "Where are the insurgents?" Two miles down the road he found them.
His team of five "strykers", an eight-wheeled armoured personal carrier, had stopped to search an area of wasteland and concrete houses, the scene of an ambush the day before.
It didn't take long to find stashes of artillery shells, sniper bullets and RPGs hidden among broken masonry and old scrap along the side of the road.
From a distance a crowd of residents watched. "Now that's a goddam complicit population," fumed Kurilla. "I know they're scared to act against the insurgents," he added.
Most of Kurilla's men were loading up into the "strykers" when the suicide bomber struck, ramming the slowly closing ramp door of one of the vehicles. A fireball sucked up air, and a body part landed on the ground.
Soldiers began racing over to the vehicle. There were casualties. Sgt Shannon Kay, who had managed to set off three shots at the vehicle as it approached, had blood pouring down one side of his face. He climbed into the rear shooting hatch of one of the "strykers", as a mortar landed 30 metres away. "You should get down, you're hurt," said the officer in charge. Sgt Shannon Kay leaned back into the vehicle. "I'm going to finish this thing. Sgt Victor Brazfield, (23), said, "He's fine. He's just f***ing mad." An F-18 flew over the building from which insurgents had been firing with small arms. A guided missile hit on the ground outside.
Back at the headquarters of Deuce-4, Lt Col Kurilla tucked into a plate of pasta. It was the second such attack in as many days. Six US soldiers had been injured. "We got seven of the bad guys," he said.
"There's an end in sight. Pretty soon the people of Mosul are going to see that the insurgents want nothing but destruction and we want to rebuild the place."