Kurdish Guerrillas Advance Toward Irbil They Say Iranian Soldiers Allegedly Helping Rivals Left

Artillery boomed in the hills Wednesday as Kurdish guerrillas advanced toward the key city of Irbil, seeking to recapture it from a rival faction.

Irbil, the de facto capital of the Kurdish region, was captured by the Kurdistan Democratic Party on Aug. 31 with the help of Saddam Hussein’s army, prompting the United States to retaliate with cruise missile attacks on Iraqi air-defense installations in southern Iraq.

The rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which had held the city, was moving back toward Irbil Wednesday from the east and northeast.

KDP fighters claimed the PUK was being helped by Iranian soldiers. But all the fighters encountered Wednesday spoke Kurdish and appeared to be Kurdish. A KDP fighter said the Iranians had pulled back.

“Last night, they all started leaving, back to Iran I suppose,” said Jamil Mahmoud, the head of a small group of guerrillas guarding trenches on the other side of the front line.

Now that the Iranians had left, Mahmoud said, “we will start attacking and win back everything we lost in no time.”

The PUK was closest to Irbil in this village, about 20 miles northeast of the city. It also was advancing from Kuysanjaq, a town about 25 miles east of Irbil and on the main road from Sulaymaniyah.

“We are not going to stop. We will go on until the end. We are going to get all of Kurdistan,” said Rasul Kosrat, an aide to Patriotic Union leader Jalal Talabani.

The Patriotic Union recaptured Sulaymaniyah, its traditional stronghold and the area’s second-largest city, in a counteroffensive last week that forced the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party from several towns.

The two factions long have fought for control of northern Iraq, which the United States and its allies set up as a Kurdish “safe haven” in 1991 to protect the Kurds after they made a failed uprising against Saddam.