>>Kurds Close in on Kirkuk
QARAH ANJIR, (Southern Kurdistan) March 28 (AFP) Iraqi Kurd rebels on Friday advanced to within 16 kilometers (10 miles) of the northern oil capital Kirkuk after Iraqi government forces abandoned their positions, bringing them to within striking distance of their most prized objective.
In the first major movement on the northern front against Baghdad, fighters from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) captured the garrison town of Qarah Anjir, situated in hills to the east of Kirkuk, after clearing scores of anti- tank and anti-personnel mines left behind by the retreating Iraqi army.
"The Iraqi army is finished. They were ordered to pull back to defend the city," boasted Rostam Hamid Rahim, a top PUK commander.
Fighters here allowed journalists to walk out of Qarah Anjir to a point just 16 kilometers from Kirkuk city centre and 14 kilometers from the city limits.
PUK military sources said the Iraqi troops were now only holding a perimeter on the edge of the city, and said the Kurds would first consolidate their positions and coordinate with US troops and their erstwhile rivals in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) -- posted to the north of Kirkuk -- before moving forward.
They also said small teams of United States special forces were working alongside their PUK allies in the operation to secure the area captured.
But the Iraqi forces near Kirkuk were quick to signal that their battle was not over.
A salvo of around 10 rockets slammed into Chamchamal shortly before 6:00 pm (1500 GMT) in what local PUK security official said was a classic Iraqi army maneouvre of firing on lost ground. At least one person was lightly injured in the barrage, later determined to be from a 122mm multiple rocket launcher.
Meanwhile, Rostam dismissed suggestions that the Kurds would be kept out of Kirkuk in the light of Turkish concerns that a capture of the oil-rich city could embolden Kurdish moves towards independence.
"This is our area," asserted Rostam, a native of the city who has been battling central government in Baghdad for 35 years. "The Americans will not prevent us from liberating Kirkuk."
The Kurds see Kirkuk -- situated in a northern belt where some one-third of Iraq's oil is tapped -- as their capital in a future federal Iraq. Tens of thousands of them have been displaced from the city in a campaign of "Arabisation" ordered by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The PUK's jubilant advance came after Iraqi forces abandoned a string of hill- top positions near Chamchamal after several waves of US air strikes on the lush green hills.
On the road to this abandoned town, Kurdish villagers were seen rooting through the abandoned Iraqi posts collecting abandoned firearms, gas masks, wire, blankets and scrap metal -- despite the high risk of landmines. Along the main road, scores of holes were seen where mines had been dug up.
Hundreds of PUK reinforcements -- many of them waving their guns in jubilation at the advance -- were also seen along the road moving in to reinforce the front.
In Qarah Anjir, a huge bulldozer was called in to smash a towering portrait of Saddam Hussein as well as clear a huge pile of mud blocking the road to Kirkuk left during the Iraqi army's tactical withdrawal.
"It was really a pleasure. Saddam has been treading on us for so long so it was great to drive over him," quipped Abdullah, the bulldozer driver who spent around 10 minutes smashing the metal-reinforced concrete structure covered with a ceramic portrait of the Iraqi president.
The town -- an Iraqi garrison centre that has been almost totally abandoned for years -- was devoid of any life except Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
The move in the frontline came after the US airdropped 1,000 troops into areas held by the KDP as well as flying special forces teams into PUK-held areas here.
More troops were flown into the Switzerland-sized Kurdish zone overnight Thursday, and a large convoy of US fighting vehicles were sighted near the PUK's nearby administrative capital of Sulaymaniya while some US personnel were seen near the frontline here.
US forces also flew in more transport vehicles overnight but as yet have not brought in any armour, another AFP correspondent at the scene said.
Dozens of trucks and Humvees were assembled near the landing strip at Harir, northeast of Kurdistan's main town of Arbil, in KDP-held territory, and two more Sea Stallion helicopters were on the tarmac, taking the total to four.
But US operations here have been limited by Ankara's refusal to allow the use of Turkish soil for a deployment into northern Iraq. Washington had initially hoped to send in 62,000 troops via Turkey, in what could have been a key northern push towards Baghdad.
Also Friday, thousands of PUK fighters backed by US special forces swept into territory held by a hardline Islamist group allegedly linked to al-Qaeda, Kurdish officials said.
The sources said some 8,000 peshmergas captured a string of villages held by Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) between the Kurdish town of Halabja and the Iranian border.
The PUK said the Islamist fighters fled into the mountains that mark the border with Iran after a massive dawn assault that began at around 7:00 am (0400 GMT).
Along with the KDP, the PUK has been running northern Iraq since the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, when Saddam's forces were pushed out of Kuwait by a US-led military operation.
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