Posted on 03/23/2003 4:49:00 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Iraqi Kurds says U.S. hits Islamists for second day
By Joe Logan
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, March 23 (Reuters) - An Iraqi Kurdish group running part of northern Iraq said U.S. forces had launched a second day of missile strikes there on Sunday against an Islamist group accused by Washington of links to al Qaeda.
An official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said U.S. missiles had struck suspected Ansar al-Islam positions near the Iranian border, one day after Washington firing missiles and launching air raids on Ansar's mountainous stronghold.
"There were more strikes overnight, again with cruise missiles," said the official of the PUK, which also accuses Ansar al-Islam of links to the group that Washington blames for the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks on the United States.
Washington accuses Ansar al-Islam, which has several hundred fighters, most of them Kurds, of working to produce chemical weapons with help from al Qaeda, and of ties to an al Qaeda figure it says played a role in the killing of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan last year.
One of the areas targeted on Saturday was the village of Khurmal, which is held by another Islamist group, Komali i-Islami, which the PUK says may be linked to Ansar al-Islam.
Komali officials said many of the casualties from Saturday's strikes -- estimated by the PUK at 100 dead or injured -- had been from their ranks.
On Sunday PUK security forces cordoned off the Komali headquarters in Sulaimaniya, which they said the group had abandoned for Khurmal and other villages near Ansar territory.
Al Jazeera television aired footage on Saturday of what it said were bodies of members of Ansar al-Islam killed in air raids on villages held by the group.
It showed bloodied corpses lying amid rubble and bodies wrapped in blankets being lifted onto a truck.
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