20 March 1991: Kurdish forces have almost completed the capture of the northern Iraqi oil town of Kirkuk

Kurdish rebels have almost completed the capture of the northern Iraqi oil town of Kirkuk, a Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) spokesman said last night.

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Fierce fighting was continuing in the city centre, in what the Kurds described as mopping-up operations. ‘We expect the last garrison to fall at any moment,’ the spokesman said. Another Kurdish movement, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said its forces held all strategic locations, including the military airport, the oil company and the radio and television stations. Four hundred political prisoners had been freed. A PUK spokesman said rebels were besieging the headquarters of the intelligence service and the ruling Ba’ath party.

The Kirkuk region, where Arab and Kurdish territorial claims have traditionally come into fiercest collision, accounted for one third of Iraq’s oil exports before the invasion of Kuwait. ‘To take it is like a dream,’ said the KDP official.

Kurds fear that the loss of Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, would be such a blow to President Saddam Hussein that, despite US warnings, he might resort to the use of chemical weapons.

It is no accident, they believe, that he chose March 16 to make his first speech to his people since his defeat in the Gulf. It was on March 16, 1988, that Iraqi aircraft dropped cyanide, nerve and mustard gas on the Kurdish town of Halabja, which had just fallen to the Iranian army. Some 5,000 civilians died.

In his speech, President Saddam warned the Kurds they were repeating the same ‘fatal error’ they had made in previous uprisings, and that ‘their fate will be the same as those that came before’.

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Jalal Talabani, leader of the PUK, said in Damascus he had reliable information that President Saddam was planning to use gas.

‘If the government uses chemical weapons,’ he warned, ‘we will blow up the dams at Dokan (northeast of Kirkuk ) and Darbandikan (just south of Halabja), which are under our control. The Iraqi regime would be fully responsible for the flooding of Baghdad as a result.’ If Scud missiles were used, the dams would also be blown up.

Kurds claim anti-government riots have spread to Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, with a mixed Arab and Kurdish population, which is reportedly surrounded by Kurdish rebels. Sunni Muslim and Christian Arabs joined Kurds in protests.

A KDP spokesman said that the security forces had rounded up 20,000 Mosul residents as a human shield against rebels. He said Iraqi loyalists had used light planes and helicopter gunships to strafe six Kurdish towns, killing more than 50 civilians and wounding 200.

He added that the KDP leader, Massoud Barzani, had appealed to the UN and foreign governments for food and medicine to help the Kurds in their ‘desperate situation’.

Meanwhile, Shi’ite rebel spokesman continued to dispute Baghdad’s claims that riots have been crushed in southern towns. One said that Najaf, Kerbala, al-Amarah, al-Kut and al-Nasiriyah were still in rebel hands.

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Refugees gave conflicting reports of the situation in Basra. Some said that the resistance had died down others said rebels still held parts of the city. They all spoke of desperate hunger. However, some reported that helicopters, presumably Iranian, were dropping food into rebel-held parts of the city.

Iran has denied aiding the rebels, but one refugee said Iranian-based Iraqi militiamen were crossing the Shatt al-Arab estuary in boats filled with weapons.