U.S. airstrike hits Kurdish convoy

By Paul Watson
Los Angeles Times

PIRDAWD, Iraq — American aircraft struck a convoy of Kurdish fighters and U.S. Special Forces yesterday in a "friendly fire" attack that Kurds said killed at least 18 and wounded dozens more.

U.S. military officials said they were investigating what could be one of the deadliest such accidents of the war on Iraq. A statement from Central Command said the allied aircraft were providing close air support near the village of Kalak, about 30 miles southeast of Mosul.

The number of casualties was unclear. Citing early reports, U.S. officials said one civilian may have been killed and that an American soldier, a Kurdish soldier and four civilians were among the injured.

But Kurdish officials said the attack set at least 12 vehicles on fire, killing 17 fighters and a civilian translator for the British Broadcasting Corp. Some of the shrapnel holes in the destroyed vehicles were as big as dinner plates, they said. Among the injured, they said, were some of the top military leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls northwestern Iraq.

John Simpson, a BBC reporter who was following the military convoy and who sustained minor shrapnel wounds, confirmed the scale of the attack.

"All of the vehicles are on fire, there are bodies burning all around me, bits of bodies all around," he said. "The Americans saw this convoy, and they bombed it. They hit their own people."

Hoshyar Zebari, spokesman for the KDP, said he believed that two or three U.S. soldiers were wounded.

Regional commander Kakameen Mustafa, who was in the convoy and survived the airstrike without a scratch, said a U.S. fighter bomber fired a single missile. U.S. forces shouldn't be faulted, he said.

"It's something ordinary, and we don't blame them," he said. "This is war, and everything happens in war."

It was at least the second time that U.S. warplanes have mistakenly attacked KDP fighters. Tuesday, as Kurdish shepherds and their families slept in the village of Qurshaqlu, at least one jet dropped about 12 bombs, apparently targeting an anti-aircraft gun on a nearby ridge that the fighters kept for defense against Iraqi troops. A 7-year-old boy was seriously wounded in the bombing.

Among more than 45 people injured in yesterday's incident was Wajy Barzani, the KDP fighters' top commander. He was hospitalized in critical condition, suffering from what Kurdish sources described as a severe head wound.

When his condition had stabilized at Irbil's Emergency Hospital for war wounded, Barzani was airlifted on a U.S. military plane for treatment in Germany, Zebari said.

The commander is the younger brother of the KDP's prime minister, Massoud Barzani.

As news spread that Wajy Barzani was gravely wounded, hundreds of Kurds gathered and prayed outside the hospital. Zebari said he hoped that Barzani would return to resume his command, but he insisted that Barzani's absence would not affect the overall war plan.

"He is one of the commanders but not the only commander," Zebari said.

Another key commander, Massoud Barzani's son Mansour, was slightly injured in the airstrike. He leads the KDP fighters' special forces.

Despite the heavy human cost of the day's fighting, hundreds of Mustafa's men were in high spirits as they tallied the weapons captured in the morning attack. They included tanks, trucks, anti-aircraft guns, heavy canons and a truckload of 120 mm mortar bombs and crates of ammunition.