KIRKUK, Iraq, 12 April 2003 — US troop reinforcements headed yesterday to northern Iraq’s oil capital of Kirkuk with orders to secure the city seized by Kurdish fighters the day before, said a senior Kurdish official. “They are on their way to Kirkuk,” said Barham Salah, the Kurdish “prime minister” of an autonomous zone of northern Iraq administered by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Ankara, meanwhile, sent military observers into northern Iraq to ensure the Kurds would stick to a three-way deal with Washington to withdraw from the city. Hundreds of Kurdish policemen had already arrived in Kirkuk to restore order after the situation began spinning out of control overnight, an AFP reporter saw.
Other Kurdish sources said that US reinforcements were expected here later in the day. Salah said Kurdish fighters who captured the city Thursday along with US special forces would withdraw “as quickly as possible, but not before a sufficient number of American troops have arrived.”
After a night of ceaseless looting, Rizgarali Hamgam, installed as provisional governor by the Kurds following the seizure of Kirkuk, admitted, “We cannot control the situation.” His office was besieged by hundreds of complainants as bands of looters who followed the peshmerga fighters into Kirkuk made off with lorry loads of booty.
