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From the Guardian Unlimited (UK) Dated Tuesday November 25 ]b]
By Michael Howard in Mosul
The US military is acting to stem the rising tide of radical Islamism in Iraq's third largest city and rooting out preachers held to be using their sermons to incite attacks on Americans. Alarmed by a surge of deadly attacks in Mosul, a Sunni Muslim stronghold of 1.7 million Arabs and Kurds, coalition forces are running what the US commander, Major General David H Petraeus, calls a "race to win over the hearts and minds of the people". A team of US army chaplains is liaising with imams at the city's main mosques in an attempt to reassure the once dominant Sunni Arabs that they have not lost their stake in the new Iraq. The attacks, the latest of which was on Sunday, when two American soldiers were shot dead and then mutilated, reveal a simmering resentment among sections of Mosul's Arab population - particularly the large number of unemployed and disaffected youth.
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