By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran and Gareth Smyth in Suleimaniya,,northern Iraq
Published: March 27 2003 4:00 | Last Updated: March 27 2003 4:00
The US has bombed the village bases of three northern Iraqi-based militias in the past few days, local and Iranian sources said yesterday, as its Kurdish allies predicted an imminent ground offensive against an Islamist group claimed by Washington to have links with al- Qaeda.
Khasraw Gul Mohamed, a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) - one of two main parties controlling the Kurdish northern enclave - said last night that ground operations would begin "within days" against villages held by Ansar al-Islam, after US bombing of its strongholds near Halabja continued for the second successive day.
Mr Mohamed claimed that two members of the group killed by the PUK on Monday night had been identified as "Afghan Arabs" linked to al-Qaeda by PUK-held Ansar al-Islam prisoners.
But he criticised Friday's US bombing of a second Islamist group, Komal, which he said had resulted from the US having different sources of information.
In a possible reference to Ansar al-Islam, US President George W. Bush said yesterday that US forces had destroyed the base of a terrorist group in northern Iraq that was targeting the US and Europe for a "deadly poison" attack.
Separately, however, a senior Iranian official claimed US attacks had destroyed two military bases of the People's Mujahideen (MKO), listed as a terrorist group by the US State Department.
The MKO, an Iranian armed opposition group, has been based in Iraq since the mid-1980s and is financed and equipped by the Baghdad regime.
The organisation, which has waged operations against Iranian civilians and assassinated Iranian officials since the 1980s, also helped Baghdad to suppress the failed Shia uprising in 1991.
It is accused by the US of having killed US military personnel and civilians working on defence projects in Tehran during the 1970s.
To complicate matters further, there were local reports of fighting near Khanaqin between Khalq and Iranian-backed Shia forces of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri).
The Iranian official said that Tehran had not been informed of the bombardment of the MKO. But he added: "We've got the information that it was a planned attack."
Since the beginning of the war three stray missiles have hit Iran's western border towns of Abadan, Sardasht and Qasr-e-Shirin.
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