Iraqi-Backed Kurds Continue Counterattacks
Iraqi-backed Kurdish guerrillas pressed their counterattack Saturday, capturing this village and driving Iranian-supported rivals farther eastward for a second day.
The Iraqi-sponsored faction is aiming to retake Sulaymaniyah, the second-largest city in mountainous northern Iraq, and reestablish control over the entire Kurdish region.
After fierce battles in the surrounding hills, fighters of the Baghdad-backed Democratic Party of Kurdistan, or KDP, captured Khaniwatman, about 60 miles southeast of Irbil, the regional capital.
Fighting continued into the evening, and neither the KDP nor its enemy, the Iranian-sponsored Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, released casualty figures.
Also Saturday, 170 Iraqi Kurds crossed into Turkey from northern Iraq as part of a U.S. plan to evacuate CIA-funded dissidents and their families.
The Kurds were brought to a camp in Silopi, a southeastern town near the Iraqi border, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported. It said that 530 more Iraqi Kurds were to be evacuated during the course of the weekend.
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