Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 16, 1991 TAG: 9103160235
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NICOSIA, CYPRUS LENGTH: Medium
In northern Iraq, where Kurdish rebels claim to have captured large expanses of territory, fierce fighting persisted near the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, according to Kurdish spokesmen and the government radio in Iran.
Iraqi rebels fighting to overthrow Saddam Hussein have captured the strategic Turkish-Iraq border-crossing town of Zakhu on the principal highway between Iraq and Turkey and are fighting their way west to the nearby Syrian border, witnesses said Friday.
The first direct reports of fighting in the area gave credence to claims of major territorial advances by a coalition of Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas fighting against forces loyal to the Iraqi dictator.
In Paris Friday, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party said 95 percent of Iraqi Kurdistan was in rebel hands.
Iraqi radio, meanwhile, said President Saddam Hussein would give "an important, historic address" over national television today. It did not elaborate.
It would be Saddam's first televised address since Feb. 26, when he announced he would pull his troops out of Kuwait to achieve a cease-fire with the U.S.-led military force in the Persian Gulf.
Rebel spokesmen maintained their forces north and south were making headway against the Iraqi army. It was not possible to verify any of the claims because Western reporters have been unable to reach the scenes of the fighting.
Rebel reports said Shiite and Kurdish forces captured 19 tanks from Baghdad government troops in the battlefields along the Iranian and Turkish borders and that fleeing Iraqi troops set ablaze four oil wells around Kirkuk.
On Friday, Iraqi television broadcast an interview with a young, mustachioed man who said he fought as a rebel in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and said he had murdered and raped Iraqis.
The man, identified only as a 22-year-old, said he joined the revolt after promises of money, cars and a beautiful house. "We have sold ourselves to traitors from outside this country," he said.
The TV said the rebel confessed to cooperating with Iranians. The broadcast said the Iraqi army was in full control in Karbala and in Najaf, another Shiite holy city where rebel forces were reported fighting.
Bayan Jabr, a spokesman in the Syrian capital of Damascus for the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said 2,000 Iraqi troops from the Republican Guard gave up to Shiite rebels Thursday in Nashwa.
The town lies about midway between Basra and Qurna, where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers join. Shiite rebels have been fighting Iraqi troops in the area since just after U.S.-led forces routed the Iraqi army from Kuwait last month.
Jabr's communique also said that Republican Guard forces who "sold themselves to the devil" were shelling residential areas in Najaf and Karbala.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency earlier quoted Iraqi rebels as saying that Republican Guard artillery damaged the burial shrines of Hussein and Abbas - figures revered by the Shiites - in Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Hussein was grandson of the Prophet Mohammed. Abbas was Hussein's half-brother.
Kurdish rebels also captured the town of Dehok, near Turkey, and Tuz Khurmatu, about 55 miles southeast of Kirkuk, said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a Damascus-based umbrella group for Kurdish rebels.
He said government forces killed scores of women and children when they bombarded Tuz Khurmatu after it was captured by rebel forces.
by CNB