Yahoo! News - Iraqi City in Lockdown After U.S. Base Blasted
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. forces sealed off entire districts of the Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday and raided homes in a hunt for suspects following a guerrilla attack that killed 18 Americans and four Iraqis.

Mosul's governor issued an order banning use of the five bridges that span the River Tigris in the city, and said anyone breaking the order would be shot. Residents said Iraq's third city was a virtual ghost town, with no one in the streets.

Mosul, an ethnically mixed city of Arabs and Kurds, has slid into chaos over recent months, especially since guerrillas routed the U.S.-trained police in mid-November, as U.S. troops were concentrating on storming Falluja, west of Baghdad.

In the past two months alone nearly 200 people have been found dead, most of them Iraqis, in a city of two million.

This is no Falluja. If the "insurgents" have set up shop here, we cannot storm or evacuate a city of two million as we did there. Kids, this is not going to get better, even after the "elections". Can you say quagmire?