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Posted on 04/10/2003 6:35:57 AM PDT by Prince Charles
Bloodshed as Kirkuk falls
By Sam Kiley in northern Iraq
10 April 2003
I was caught up in a dramatic firefight today as the allied push through northern Iraq claimed the key oil town of Kirkuk. In a major advance for the coalition campaign, I accompanied US marines and Kurdish peshmerga forces as they reached positions on the very edge of the city and then thrust further into the centre.
Groups of Kurdish fighters, including women, marched in to be met by crowds of celebrating locals.
But the path to Kirkuk was perilous. In Laylan, our unit of Kurds and eight American Green Berets fell into a terrifying ambush as they were abandoned by their peshmerga fighters, leaving them exposed on two sides to heavy machinegun and mortar fire.
The Green Berets held their ground as the first mortar rounds crashed into a wheatfield 50 feet from the Evening Standard's car, and fought a skirmish lasting about 20minutes. They fired with a multiple grenade launcher on a recently-rigged British Land Rover which had only arrived after protracted negotiations with Turkey in the last few days.
"Without that gun, we would be spaghetti bolognese by now," said Andrew, a Green Beret sergeant who manned the weapon. He said he had hundreds of rounds whipping past his ears until the snipers were silenced with blasts from his 40mm grenade launcher.
Kirkuk's oil fields and a vast cement factory, said to be the biggest in the Middle East, were firmly in Kurdish hands by lunchtime. Early indications suggest there had been little or no damage caused to the much-prized oil wells. Many had feared troops loyal to Saddam would try to blow them up prior to any retreat.
However, the Kurdish gains today provoked a protest from Turkey that it was "unacceptable" for the Kurds to stay in Kirkuk for any length of time. Turkey has already threatened to invade Iraq to prevent the Kurds from establishing their own state using the north's oil resources.
During the march to Kirkuk, marines and the Kurds took a succession of prisoners of war. Mohamed Nasir, an Iraqi soldier captured by the Kurds yesterday morning, said that Iraqi military chiefs had forced him at gunpoint to fight on the front line because he had earlier attempted to desert.
"They took away our watches and radios four months ago and there were many executions when people were caught at checkpoints trying to escape from the army. At night, the officers in the execution squads behind us would shell us and fire machineguns randomly into our positions to keep us in the trenches," said Nasir. He had no idea why American planes had been bombing him or that Saddam Hussein's regime had collapsed.
He also warned that the Iraqi force on the road to Laylan was made up of a specially-recruited death squad who he expected to fight to the last man for fear of retribution from the Kurds. They have every reason to exact revenge. Many Kurdish villages were reduced to rubble 12 years ago during Saddam's campaign of ethnic cleansing, in which 182,000 Kurds vanished.
At the height of the fighting, John, the captain in charge of the Green Beret team in Laylan, withdrew his men a kilometre beyond the range of Iraqi mortars and called in air strikes. "These are the last men fighting on this front and we're glad to have a hand in putting an end to them," he said.
In the back of his Land Rover sat a young prisoner of war captured in Laylan who told an interpreter that he was amazed to have been given water and sweets by the Americans. He said he had expected to be shot in the head.
Come on in, the water's fine. We've got plenty of extra JDAMs.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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Good cop, bad cop.
Example No. 24,382 of the difference between them and us.
Indeed.
If these poor benighted, misguided fools could comprehend the truth, they would abandon their cult of death and embrace life, the God of Love, and The American Dream and make them their own. What fools they are!
Kurdish women fighters bump.
no thanks!
Anyway, I didn't post that pic for you to ogle at, but to give them a thumbs up for bravery, and to show something unusual.
Turkey has lost any authority they may have had in Iraq. The 4th ID is headed north to 'secure' the area regardless who the belligerants may be.
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