- (AFP) -- Eighteen Kurds were killed and 45 others wounded
near here when US aircraft mistakenly bombed a convoy in northern Iraq,
Kurdish sources said, denying reports that four US special forces troops
were among the dead.
-
- Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) external relations official
Hoshyar Zebari told AFP that all those killed in the friendly fire attack,
who included a translator for the BBC, were peshmerga fighters.
-
- Zebari said the dead included many of the commanders
of Kurdish forces who are battling, with assistance from elite American
units, forces loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on the northern front.
-
- Among the seriously wounded in the attack at Dibaga,
20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Arbil, was Wajih Barzani, 33, the head
of KDP special forces and brother of party leader Massoud Barzani.
-
- Zebari said Wajih Barzani had been evacuated to Germany
by US troops for medical treatment. Massoud Barzani's son, Mansour, 22,
also sustained minor injuries.
-
- Hospital sources in Arbil said four Americans were among
the dead. BBC correspondent John Simpson, who was travelling with the convoy
and suffered minor injuries in the attack, also said he saw American dead.
-
- Zebari, however, said no Americans had been killed but
two or three US special forces soldiers were injured.
-
- The US Central Command admitted in a statement that "coalition
aircraft may have engaged special operations and friendly Kurdish ground
forces approximately 30 miles (50 kilometres) southeast of Mosul".
-
- "Coalition aircraft were conducting close air support
missions at the time (around 0915 GMT), and were in coordination with ground
forces, the statement from the US command at the Prince Sultan Airbase
in Saudi Arabia said.
-
- A subsequent statement from US Central Command headquarters
in Qatar said "early casualty reports indicate one civilian may have
been killed, (and) one US soldier, one Kurdish soldier and four civilians
were injured".
-
- It said an investigation was ongoing.
-
- Eyewitnesses told AFP that the attack occurred while
a group of Kurdish fighters and US troops were inspecting a tank left behind
by Iraqi government forces who pulled back from the area.
-
- Zebari said "there was (Iraqi) firing and the American
special forces asked for close air support, but unfortunately two aircraft
bombed the joint forces".
-
- "I really do not know exactly how this happened,
why this happened. This will be investigated but definitely there must
have been a mistake," he later told a press conference in Arbil.
-
- "Maybe the line of combat was too close, maybe they
have mistaken some of the tanks that the peshmerga have taken with the
new columns that were advancing towards them, you never know, but definitely
a mistake has happened."
-
- The BBC's Simpson said he counted 10 to 12 bodies after
the air strike, some of them US special forces personnel. He said he saw
the low-flying plane drop a bomb which landed some four metres (yards)
from where he was standing.
-
- The convoy of eight or 10 cars was being escorted by
US special forces travelling in two trucks, he said.
-
- "The Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it
and they hit their own people. They've killed a lot of ordinary characters.
I've counted 10 or 12 bodies around us, so there are Americans dead.
-
- "This was a really bad own goal by the Americans.
We don't know how many Americans are dead," Simpson said.
-
- "This is just a scene from hell here, all the vehicles
on fire. There's bodies burning around me, there's bodies lying around,
there's bits of bodies on the ground," he added.
-
- An AFP photographer who went to the scene saw 11 burned
out vehicles, including American, some of which were still in flames or
smoking. There was a single crater about two metres wide and one metre
from the convoy, which was stationary when the bomb dropped.
-
- Witnesses said some 100 civilian and military vehicles
were in the convoy.
-
- Zebari said joint operations with coalition forces would
not be jeopardised despite the setback and the serious injuries sustained
by Wajih Barzani.
-
- "Definitely it will not affect our overall operations
or the planning that we are having now with coalition forces. We hope he
will recover.
-
- However, he conceded that the incident had dealt a blow
to morale.
-
- "Definitely it will have an effect on the people
he was commanding because he was very much liked he was young, dedicated
and motivated also but this is a war situation and these things can happen.
-
- Heavy fighting was continuing Sunday between Iraqi and
Kurdish forces, which are slowly advancing from the autonomous enclave
of Iraqi Kurdistan towards the main northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
-
- Copyright © 2002 AFP. All rights reserved. All information
displayed in this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected
by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence
you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any
way commercially exploit any of the contents of this section without the
prior written consent of Agence France-Presses.
|
