Iraqi troops and officials loyal to Saddam Hussein have abandoned the northern city of Mosul, leaving it open to U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, a Kurdish commander told Reuters on Friday.
"There are no Saddam regime followers left there, that's clear," the commander said at a checkpoint near the outskirts and eight miles from the center of Iraq's third biggest city.
Reuters said an important bridge at Khazer, on the road to Mosul from Arbil, had been repaired. That would allow U.S. tanks which have been flying in to Kurdish-controlled Arbil to reach Mosul easily. Departing Iraqi troops had blown up the bridge some days ago.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking in Washington early on Friday Iraqi time, said small numbers of U.S. troops and Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas were entering Mosul. Reuters had seen U.S. tanks headed there on Thursday.
Elsewhere in northern Iraq there was further evidence that the Iraqi frontline against the Kurds was collapsing following the fall of Saddam's authority in Baghdad on Wednesday.
CNN filmed hundreds of young men streaming southward on a road near Kifri, much further to the south, who said they had been soldiers around Kirkuk. They said their officers had abandoned them and they had discarded their uniforms and weapons to walk home, saying they had no wish to serve Saddam.
Kifri, 160 kms northeast of Baghdad, lies close to the southern end of the "green line" that has divided Saddam's forces from the Kurds.
Earlier, U.S. planes dropped six JDAM "smart bombs" on the home west of Baghdad of Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's half brother and former head of Iraq's Mukhabarat intelligence service, the U.S. military said Friday.
"The brother is a regime presidential adviser. The building was targeted with six JDAMs, in a continuing effort to degrade the Hussein regime. Battle damage assessment is ongoing," said a statement from war headquarters in the Gulf state of Qatar.
At 1:45 A.M. local time (2145 GMT Thursday), planes raided Barzan's home near Ramadi, some 110 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Barzan led the Mukhabarat intelligence service from 1979 to 1983 and was Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva from 1988 to 1997. (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
