Northern Oil Hub Falls to U.S., Kurds

A day after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. and Kurdish forces rolled into the strategic northern city of Kirkuk on Thursday, setting off delirious waves of celebration, while other American units moved on the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, the final significant outposts of Saddam Hussein’s power.

Battered for weeks by U.S. cruise missiles, Iraqi soldiers peeled off their uniforms and fled Kirkuk as a Kurdish-led uprising swept through the oil city, which Kurds regard as their Jerusalem.

Baghdad remained firmly in U.S. hands, although fighting flared in some parts of the capital and looters took advantage of the absence of civil authority to strip shops and government buildings bare. A suicide bomber targeted U.S. Marines in the capital, wounding four and sending a reminder to American forces that dangers still lurk there.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair inaugurated programming on what had been Iraqi state television, delivering messages designed to reassure Iraqis about the allies’ intentions for their country.

“The goals for our coalition are clear and limited,” Bush said. “We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave. Iraq will go forward as a unified, independent and sovereign nation that has regained a respected place in the world.”

Blair tried to allay concerns, widespread in the Arab world, that the U.S. and Britain are motivated primarily by a desire for Iraq’s vast oil reserves. “The money from Iraqi oil will be yours,” he said, “to be used to build prosperity for you and your families.”

The timing of the two leaders’ messages, coupled with the gains in northern Iraq and continuing control of Baghdad and Basra, the nation’s two biggest cities, suggested that allied forces believe they are close to achieving a complete military victory. Although U.S. officials continued to stress that the job is far from done, their first goal -- the removal of Hussein’s regime -- appeared to be all but accomplished.

The remaining tasks may prove to be no less daunting. Those include securing the peace, installing some sort of interim administration, finding evidence of any illegal Iraqi weapons and locating Hussein, dead or alive.

In one indication of the perils ahead, a mob stormed Iraq’s holiest Shiite Muslim shrine Thursday and killed two religious leaders, one of whom had returned from exile last week. The mob had apparently come to the mosque in Najaf, south of Baghdad, intent on killing Haidar Kadar, a cleric who had been appointed by Hussein and was widely disliked. The newly arrived cleric, Abdel Majid Khoei, was also killed when he tried to persuade the crowd to leave. U.S. troops had captured Najaf about a week earlier.

In Kirkuk, the scenes Thursday in many ways mirrored those in Baghdad the day before and in Basra days earlier, but in other ways were very different.

Kirkuk has long been a place of misery, and its fall from Hussein’s hands was widely viewed by the Kurds here as a true liberation. After the Iraqi soldiers fled, Kurdish fighters soon moved in and neighborhoods erupted in singing and dancing.

“I would like to fly in the sky. I’m so happy. Today, we have freedom,” said Ali Hussin Ali, standing in a crowded street.

U.S. Special Forces moved quickly toward the city’s outskirts to secure 300 oil wells -- and to allay the fears of neighboring Turkey, which claims historical rights to the city and wants a share of its oil supply. It had been feared that Iraqi soldiers would ignite the wells, but none appeared to be sabotaged. A 50-foot-high flame rising from a pipeline between a well and a refinery burned throughout the day but did not spread.

By late afternoon, Kirkuk’s main hospital had taken in at least 50 gunshot victims, all apparently civilians, said ambulance driver Najmaddin Ali. Relatives blamed Hussein loyalists and Kurdish guerrillas. Doctors said they thought at least some of the wounds were from celebratory gunfire.

A campaign of “Arabization” by Hussein exiled more than 100,000 Kurds from the city in the last decade. Most moved north to a Kurdish-controlled enclave within Iraq. But as Kirkuk fell Thursday, Kurds from the enclave cities of Sulaymaniyah and Irbil rushed to the city in rusty cars and trucks to reclaim their land and homes.

Leading the way were thousands of fighters in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Both parties filled the streets with flags and banners in a race by the two rivals to win the city.

The fall of Kirkuk set off alarm bells in Turkey, whose political and military leaders had repeatedly threatened to send the Turkish army to prevent a Kurdish takeover of the city. About 40,000 Turkish troops have been massed for weeks along the Iraqi border, about 150 miles northwest of Kirkuk.

Turkey is worried that Kurdish gains in northern Iraq could inspire a rebellion among Kurds in southern Turkey, many of whom have long clung to the idea of a Kurdish state.

Within hours, at about 7:30 a.m. in Washington, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was on the phone with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, reminding him of his assurances that American forces, not the Kurdish peshmerga, would take control of Kirkuk and nearby Mosul.

Powell told him those assurances were still valid, Gul said in a Turkish television interview. He said Powell promised that paratroopers of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade would arrive in Kirkuk “within a few hours to remove the peshmerga” and offered to let Turkey send military observers to make sure the Kurdish fighters leave the city.

The fall of Baghdad may have helped trigger the uprising in Kirkuk, which was orchestrated by a Kurdish underground in the city and forced U.S. military planners to take the city earlier than anticipated. A U.S. Special Forces major said that the uprising began Wednesday night and, hours later, an Iraqi army convoy of about 75 vehicles left the city. U.S. warplanes considered attacking the convoy but held back because of the possibility that civilians may have been traveling with it.

A small Iraqi contingent left behind to defend the city retreated Thursday as the U.S. and Kurdish forces advanced.

“We were planning to go ridge by ridge,” one U.S. soldier said, “but then it all just fell apart.”

This morning, long lines of Iraqi soldiers could be seen walking south on a highway in north-central Iraq, all in civilian clothes, some barefoot, apparently making their way home.

With the fall of Kirkuk, U.S. strategists turned to Mosul and to Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown and the center of his support. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday afternoon that Iraqi forces in Mosul were starting to surrender and that U.S. and Kurdish forces were moving in.

“To my knowledge, at last hearing, it is an orderly process and the forces that are entering are being welcomed by the people,” he told reporters after meeting with members of Congress on Capitol Hill.

This morning came reports from witnesses and news media that Mosul had fallen and looting had broken out. Abu Dhabi TV showed pictures from the center of the city, where looters grabbed cash from the bank. Bills littered the street. The Government House in central Mosul reportedly was empty of any Iraqi officials.

U.S.-led forces were continuing intense airstrikes on the Tikrit area, where American officials believe that the last big battle of the war could occur. Although Republican Guard units in the city had earlier moved south to Baghdad, there may still be troops of the Special Republican Guard, paramilitaries and security forces in the area, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, said Army Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Targets of the airstrikes included a Special Republican Guard barracks, a VIP retreat and a facility used to jam foreign radio broadcasts, McChrystal said in his daily briefing for reporters at the Pentagon.

He said commanders may call on U.S. forces around Baghdad or reinforcements from the 4th Infantry Division, now in Kuwait, or both, for the advance on Tikrit. He said that while U.S. forces were ready for a “big fight,” they were not yet certain that the battle for the regime’s home turf would be the bloodbath some have predicted.

“If anyone starts to throw around ... ‘Fortress Tikrit,’ I don’t think we’re prepared to say that at this point,” he said.

Despite the advances, U.S. officials sought to emphasize again that the war continues to be deadly. They noted that since a huge statue of Hussein was toppled in central Baghdad on Wednesday, Marines have had a bruising battle in the city, two U.S. GIs have been killed and several dozen have been injured.

Four Marines suffered serious injuries in the suicide attack, which occurred when a man strapped with explosives approached a checkpoint in Saddam City, a poor, mostly Shiite section of eastern Baghdad, and blew himself up, military officials said.

Some of the fiercest fighting occurred around a mosque in northern Baghdad early Thursday after Marines received a tip that remnants of the Iraqi leadership might be gathering there.

“Our troops ... took heavy fire from the vicinity of this mosque and another location and were engaged in a fairly heavy firefight for a number of hours,” said Maj. Gen. Victor Renuart, director of operations at U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar. “We’ve killed or captured the enemy force that was taking us under fire.”

There was no immediate word on whether any members of the Iraqi leadership were found there. Although there were reports that Hussein himself was believed to be in the mosque, a U.S. intelligence official described that as “one of numerous rumors flying around. We don’t have any evidence to substantiate that.”

Another rumor had Hussein en route to Tikrit.

The official said the CIA doesn’t know Hussein’s status. The agency continues to believe he was probably in a building bombed Monday in the Mansour district of Baghdad. But it was not clear whether he was injured or killed or escaped.

As firefights such as the one at the mosque erupted sporadically, U.S. troops fanned out across Baghdad on Thursday. Officers of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division said their unit had linked up with Marines at the Tigris River on Thursday morning. From one of Hussein’s presidential palaces on the west side of the river, soldiers could see Marines patrolling the roads on the east bank.

Army officers said the priorities now are taking out the last pockets of resistance on the east side of the river, helping set up an interim government for Iraq and starting the process of locating police and fire stations and tracking down civil servants and public works employees.

U.S. troops received orders Thursday to begin cracking down on the looting that began sweeping the capital the day before. Col. John Toolan, commander of the 1st Marine Regiment, told his troops that one of their major tasks in the days ahead would be to maintain order until a new Iraqi police force can be formed.

Still, military officials stressed that their troops are not police officers, and looting continued undeterred in parts of the city.

“You can’t do everything at once,” McChrystal said at the Pentagon briefing.

Officials said they wanted to find ways of working with local authorities to end the disorder in Baghdad. Renuart also tried to put the issue in perspective. “Looting is a problem, but it is not a major threat,” he said. “People are not being killed in looting.”

U.S. military officials in Baghdad said civil affairs officers have begun poring over police records in an effort to identify officers who might be able to form the core of a new force.

At the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said reestablishing law and order must be a priority in Iraq.

“From what we have seen in the reports, it appears there is no functioning government in Iraq at the moment,” he said. “We also saw the scenes of jubilation but, of course, when you think of the casualties -- both military and civilian -- the Iraqis have paid a heavy price for this.”

At a news conference in New York, a group of humanitarian organizations asked for immediate access to a wider area of Iraq so people could have water and other badly needed supplies.

The Pentagon, however, bristled at the suggestion that the invasion had caused a humanitarian crisis. “The war didn’t launch a humanitarian crisis; it is ending one ... ,” said Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman.

Rumsfeld said Thursday that the country may be in better shape than has been suggested. Asked by reporters about reconstruction work in Iraq, the defense secretary said: “I don’t know there is much reconstruction to do.”

“The bridges have not been blown, except in one or two locations in the entire country,” he added. “The oil wells have not been burned as they were in Kuwait. The electricity, where it was off, is for the most part back on. The dams were not broken and the area was not flooded. The air campaign that took place was highly targeted on palaces, regime command and control, Republican Guard barracks, military headquarters and those type of things, which no one that I know intends to reconstruct.”

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Fleishman and Watson reported from Kirkuk. Times staff writers Tony Perry with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force; David Zucchino with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division; Mark Porubcansky in Doha; Paul Richter, Janet Hook and Maura Reynolds in Washington; Richard Boudreaux in Ankara, Turkey; and John J. Goldman in New York contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Casualties

Military (as of 1 p.m. Pacific time Thursday)

*--* U.S Britain Iraq Killed 105 31 unknown

Missing 11 0 unknown

Captured 7 0 7,300

*--*

Civilian

* Iraq has said at least 1,261 civilians have been killed. In addition, nine journalists and an aid worker have died.

Los Angeles Times