KURDISH factions were engaged in heavy fighting near Irbil, the regional capital of northern Iraq, yesterday amid claims that Iraqi troops and Iranian Revolutionary Guards were fighting alongside the rival peshmergas.
In a startling reversal of fortune, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which retook Sulaimaniya over the weekend, swept on to retake two more towns from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), UN officials and guards in Iraqi Kurdistan reported.
The sources said PUK guerrillas had now recaptured Degala and Koi Sanjaq after taking control of the strategic Dokan Dam area, site of a major hydroelectric power project.
"They [PUK rebels] seem to be advancing. They are in Degala and Koi Sanjaq. Fighting is continuing and both sides are using artillery and rocket launchers," one UN official said.
From being driven into the mountains or across the border to Iran, PUK peshmergas have swept back to the outskirts of Irbil, the city of their initial defeat on August 31st by the KDP, backed by President Saddam Hussein's forces.
"We have no plans at present to retake Irbil because it's surrounded by Iraqi tanks, but we'll leave that to the people of Irbil," the PUK leader, Mr Jalal Talabani, told the London based Arabic daily, alHayat. He said the bodies of two Iraqi officers were found lying along with those of more than 350 KDP members after weekend fighting.
Iraqi forces are positioned just to the south of the northern Iraqi capital, but there has been no move so far to activate them by the government, perhaps fearing another aggressive response from the US. Baghdad has offered to host peace talks between the Kurdish rivals and urged them not to deal with "foreign forces".
A KDP delegation, on its way to talks in Washington via Ankara, appealed to the Turkish government to condemn the PUK offensive yesterday. "More than 15,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards have taken part in the latest attacks with heavy weapons, Katyusha rockets and cannons," said a senior KDP politburo member.
The PUK and Iran have issued strong denials. A foreign ministry spokesman in Tehran said Iranian forces were "not involved". He said such allegations by the KDP leader, Mr Massoud Barzani, were designed to "distract international attention from his complicity with the Iraqi army, which has led to bloody clashes."
Both sides appeared to have exaggerated the involvement of outside forces. After its help in the initial capture of Irbil, the Iraqi army seemed to confine itself to long range shelling of PUK positions during the KDP advance on Sulaimaniya.
The PUK may have benefited from heavy Iranian shelling in its current offensive. Its transformation from the defeated and demoralised band of fighters of a month ago may have been helped by Iranian logistical support and arms.