SULAYMANIYA, Iraq, 24 March 2003 — The United States has begun flying in special forces into Kurdish-held northern Iraq to follow up from two nights of airstrikes against an alleged Al-Qaeda-linked group and prepare for a northern front against Baghdad, senior Kurdish officials said yesterday.

A top political official from the pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said four transport planes carrying “scores” of US personnel flew into an airstrip outside Sulaymaniya overnight Saturday.

“There were four planes carrying scores of US personnel, primarily special forces. They are being deployed across the region,” said the official.

Another source said the planes that flew into a small airstrip outside the city under cover of darkness were carrying 280 lightly-armed troops, adding that many have been deployed around the town of Halabja, where the PUK is battling Ansar Al-Islam.

A representative of a French aid organization later told an AFP correspondent he had seen some lightly-equipped 100 Western troops in uniform heading aboard two trucks and two buses northwest from Sulaymaniya toward Arbil.

Gerard Gauthier said the convoy was spotted on a mountain road about halfway between the two main cities in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Al-Ansar, which controls an area between Halabja and the Iranian border and models itself on Afghanistan’s deposed Taleban militia, is allegedly linked to both Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Its enclave was blasted by US cruise missiles and bombs on Friday and Saturday night, and a ground offensive by some 3,000 PUK fighters backed by US special forces is expected to follow in the coming days.

“Ansar is a deadly terrorist organization that will stop at nothing,” the PUK’s Prime Minister Barham Salih asserted.

The road to Halabja was closed to journalists yesterday, the day after an Australian television cameraman was killed in a retaliatory suicide bombing near territory held by Ansar and a second Islamist group targeted, Komala Islami Kurdistan (Islamic Society of Kurdistan).

The attack on Komala — a mainstream Islamist group that had attempted to keep out of the PUK-Ansar dispute — left at least 50 people dead. Witnesses said all the dead were Komala officials.

The PUK said dozens of Ansar members were also killed.

Salih justified the strike on Komala, saying the group had been warned to evacuate the area and stop providing Ansar members with safe passage. Komala’s headquarters at the small town of Khormal lies between PUK and Ansar territory.

“We told Komala to distance themselves from Ansar politically, militarily and geographically. This advice they did not heed,” Salih asserted. “We told them that they cannot have it both ways.”

Komala has denied links with Ansar and other Kurdish sources have accused the PUK of settling scores with the group with US help. PUK officials said they hoped to “finish off” Ansar before turning their attentions to the key oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The PUK, one of the Kurdish groups that has been running the Kurdish north outside Baghdad’s control since 1991, are positioned just 40 km from Kirkuk.

US military planners have been touring the front lines for a number of weeks, and are believed to have been conducting intelligence gathering and identifying targets.

Small teams are also believed to be operating near Kirkuk, which was hit by a major airstrike late on Friday.

Salih said there were “many dead” in a military complex near Kirkuk that was targeted, and said “the situation in the city is chaos”. However the opening up of a northern front has been complicated by the complex negotiations with Turkey over the use of its airspace and territory.

Washington has abandoned plans to send an army division into northern Iraq via Turkey.