Battles in Northern Iraq Kill Dozens

Villagers marked a Muslim holiday Thursday by burying their dead after dozens were killed in battles for two hilltop positions seized by an Islamic militant group with suspected ties to Al Qaeda.

In an overnight assault, fighters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan recaptured the hilltops taken by Ansar al-Islam guerrillas a day earlier, Kurdish commander Sheik Jaffer Mustafa said. One Kurdish fighter was killed and two others were wounded in the counterattack, he said.

Kurdish groups say that some Ansar al-Islam militants were trained by Al Qaeda and have ties to the terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden.

The battle was the latest in a series of skirmishes between Ansar, whose fighters include Kurds and Arabs, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, which has sought to drive the extremist militia from its mountain stronghold on the eastern edge of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq.

Ansar seized the PUK positions near the city of Halabja as the Kurdish fighters slept Wednesday night, killing nearly 20 and capturing an equal number, Mustafa said.

The PUK, the de facto authority in northeastern Iraq, shares control of the Kurdish autonomous zone with its rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The zone is beyond the authority of the Baghdad government and is protected by U.S. and British air patrols.

In a village Thursday, funeral processions for PUK fighters mingled with the festivities of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim feast that marks the end of Ramadan.