Severed heads and bodies found in Iraq field

By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Police found nine bodies and 10 severed heads in an abandoned field north of Baghdad on Tuesday, in a region where U.S. and Iraqi forces were pressing ahead with offensives against al Qaeda forces.

In the northern city of Mosul, a suicide car bomber killed one civilian and wounded 15 others in an attack on a U.S. convoy, U.S. and Iraqi security officials said.

The U.S. military said none of its soldiers were wounded in the latest attack in Mosul, where extra Iraqi troops and police have been sent for what Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called a "decisive" final push against al Qaeda.

But Major-General Mark Hertling, commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, cautioned against such descriptions of the fight against al Qaeda, saying the Sunni Islamist militants could easily regroup elsewhere as they had done in the past.

"I'm just not confident enough to say this is the final push against AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) ... in Mosul," Hertling said.

"What we can say is that there has been an attempt by AQI to gain control of Mosul. We have to not allow them to get that stronghold," he told Reuters by telephone.

Extra Iraqi troops, backed by tanks and helicopters, began arriving in the city on Sunday but the Iraqi government has so far not given full details about numbers involved. The U.S. military says its efforts there are part of a continuing push.

Five U.S. soldiers were killed on Monday by a roadside bomb in a coordinated ambush in Mosul, which U.S. commanders regard as al Qaeda's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.