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Us kuridsh convoy hit by mistake { April 7 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43188-2003Apr6.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43188-2003Apr6.html
U.S.-Kurdish Convoy Hit by Mistaken Airstrike
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 7, 2003; Page A17
DIBAGAH, Iraq, April 6 -- Two U.S. jets bombed a convoy of Kurdish and U.S. troops today as it passed through broken Iraqi lines on a key ridge near this village, killing at least 21 Kurdish fighters. A Pentagon official said one U.S. Special Operations soldier was also apparently killed.
It was the worst friendly fire incident of the war. Among more than 40 wounded in the attack was Waji Barzani, brother of one of the top leaders of the Iraqi Kurds. The Kurds are fierce adversaries of President Saddam Hussein and have put their combat forces under U.S. command.
A BBC television correspondent was also injured in the bombing and his Kurdish assistant killed.
Several dozen Kurds and Americans were traveling by heavy and light truck when the jets struck shortly after midday. Iraqi regular army forces had earlier withdrawn from the ridge, which sits about 25 miles south-southeast of the Kurdish city of Irbil. The Iraqis had also abandoned this hamlet, which sits on the south side of the ridge, and the convoy was attempting to reinforce a unit of Kurdish guerrillas and U.S. soldiers in the area.
Spotters noticed Iraqi tanks approaching from the south and called in airstrikes, Kurdish officials said. Instead of hitting the tanks, the planes blasted the convoy. It was a hazy day and clouds were low.
"This is just a scene from hell here," the injured BBC reporter, John Simpson, said in a broadcast from the site of the attack. "All the vehicles are on fire, there are bodies burning all around me, bits of bodies all around. . . . The Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it. They hit their own people." Simpson suffered minor shrapnel wounds.
"Things were going well, and then the flames," said Mahdi Mohammed Ali, a Kurdish commander who narrowly escaped injury when shrapnel flew past his checkpoint 50 yards down the road.
Much of the carnage apparently was caused when the Kurdish guerrillas' rocket-propelled grenades were detonated by the missile and continued to explode for some time afterward.
In the aftermath, the road presented a scene of charred, twisted metallic demolition. At least two large trucks, one pickup truck and two civilian-type four-wheel-drive vehicles of the kind used by U.S. Special Forces were badly burned. A couple of other vehicles were unidentifiable; they had practically melted. Molten zinc from their batteries stained the asphalt. So did large pools of blood.
Waji Barzani, who was among the wounded, is the younger brother of Massoud Barzani, the guerrilla leader who rules this part of northern Iraq. Militias from Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are taking part in battles in the north.
Waji Barzani heads specially trained KDP units that have been working alongside the Americans. He was flown by U.S. aircraft out of Iraq for medical treatment in Germany, Kurdish officials said.
The move to Dibagah was part of the broadest and deepest thrust south into government-held territory of the war. U.S. jets bombed Iraqi army positions from Ain Sifne, 20 miles north of Mosul, to Khazer, which lies about 25 miles to the city's southeast.
Where the Iraqis abandoned camps and trenches, Kurdish militiamen moved in. On occasion, the Iraqis have counterattacked, as they apparently intended to do here. After the friendly fire incident, the Kurds and their U.S. allies abandoned Dibagah.
The north is the weakest of the allied fronts in the war. Only about 3,000 U.S. troops are in Kurdish territory.
The Pentagon had planned to use Kurdish territory as a major rear-guard area for 62,000 U.S. soldiers, equipped with tanks, artillery and armored vehicles. But Turkey rejected a Bush administration request to route troops through its territory and the large-scale northern invasion never materialized.
Turkey fears creation of a Kurdish state, or even a robust Iraqi Kurd district that might awaken nationalist passions among Turkey's substantial Kurdish population. Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been free of central government control since the 1991 Persian Gulf War and protected by U.S. and British jet fighter patrols.
The key objectives in the government-controlled north are the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, bookends of an oil-rich region. Dibagah sits on the main road that runs northwest from Kirkuk to Mosul and is located about 25 miles from each. Cutting the road would begin a process of isolating one city from the other.
The Kurds can field a guerrilla force of about 60,000 troops, but they have not all been mobilized for the front. They travel on foot or in all types of vehicles: trucks, pickups, taxis. The Americans have employed them largely as an occupying force, rather than as offensive units.
A kind of military two-step is the pattern of battle in this zone: U.S. F-14 Tomcat jets and B-52 bombers assault Iraqi fixed positions. When the Iraqi soldiers retreat, the Kurds are ordered in. They are not supposed to fight, unless the Iraqis try to return. Until today, the Kurds had suffered only two fatalities in about four days of action.
The going has been slow. On some days, the front is static. On others, the U.S.-Kurdish forces gain anywhere from five miles to as little as 200 yards.
The ridge where the convoy was bombed forms a barrier between Kurdish territory and Kirkuk's main oil fields. Government forces have not abandoned all of the high ground. A pass that leads to the town of Dibis, the beginning of oil country, is still in their hands.
As night fell, a U.S. convoy of two heavy trucks, two four-wheel-drive vehicles and two Humvees pulled onto the high ground above Dibagah. Two dozen soldiers dressed in desert camouflage took up positions in a shallow depression. A major on the scene surveyed a map.
Throughout, the Kurds and Americans tried to move forward on a line from Khazer to Ain Sifne. At Khazer, the Iraqis and the allies have traded a bridge over the Khazer River three times in the past four days.
About a 45-minute drive northwest along the Khazer River, 80 Kurds and a half-dozen U.S. Special Forces troops recently occupied the town of Dubardan and an adjacent Iraqi military camp. U.S. jets bombed nearby artillery positions on Wednesday, and the Iraqis fled. But the Americans did not permit the Kurds to come into Dubardan, a Kurdish village, until today.
At the rickety Iraqi camp, a couple of U.S. soldiers sipped soft drinks and inspected a pair of 1940s-vintage Soviet-made mortars set up by the Kurds. The guerrillas sifted through the tottering cinderblock one-story buildings.
Iraqi government forces left behind several boxes of ammunition, dozens of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, mines, medicines and copies of Hussein's speeches. One was called "Iraq Advances in Technology," another, "Iraq and Revolution." Some of the ammunition boxes bore labels that read "Army of Jordan." It was impossible to verify the origin or when the ammunition was supplied.
Brig. Gen. Sito Mohammed, the Kurdish commander at Dubardan, said he would like to move faster toward Mosul, because several Kurdish villages on the way are awaiting liberation.
"We can't do anything without the American order. We are in a defensive position," Mohammed said. "I really wish they had some helicopters. The American jets cannot really pinpoint all these little Iraqi regime artillery places and mortar positions."
"But with a helicopter," he continued with a rise in his voice and sweep of his hand, "We could get rid of them all."
At Ain Sifne, Iraqi soldiers abandoned positions and retreated a few miles south. But they covered their pullback with artillery fire, hitting Ain Sifne, which is largely populated by Kurds. Refugees streamed north into the autonomous zone.
"We are afraid of the shelling," said Hussein Haji Suleiman, who drove a Subaru stuffed with his wife, five children and big folds of blankets. He said he was happy that Kurdish militiamen were in the village, "but our home is also now a military target."
A rare car filled with Iraqi Arabs pulled into the Kurdish-held area. "We are from Baghdad and went to Ain Sifne to escape the war," said a young English-speaker. "I am not afraid in the Kurdish zone. We are not looking for trouble. Just a place to sleep."
He declined to give his name. Asked what he thought about the general situation, his eyes shifted right and left, and he replied, "It's difficult to say."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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