Kurds blamed for chaos in Mosul

American and Kurdish troops yesterday tightened their grip on Mosul, the capital of northern Iraq, ending an orgy of looting that has gutted banks, hotels and public offices.

However, there was still sporadic fighting. A prolonged burst of machine-gun fire made a deafening noise outside the gates of the Republic Hospital just as four men were lifting the body of a dead relative, wrapped in a white shroud, on to a truck.

The driver of the truck, frightened by the firing, suddenly accelerated away, leaving the mourners with the body, shaking their fists at the disappearing vehicle.

About 700 US troops and a similar number of peshmerga, as Kurdish soldiers are known, had moved into Mosul overnight, but the forces were still stretched thin in this sprawling city of more than one million. Squads of vigilantes, organised by the local mosques, had barricaded streets with stones and set up checkpoints, on the lookout for looters.

In the Republic Hospital, the largest in the city, where many wounded were still arriving, Dr Ayad Ramadhani, just appointed general director after his predecessor fled, blamed the Kurds for the chaos in the city.

"The peshmerga and Kurdish militia were looting the city," he said. "It is the civilians, who get their orders from the mosque, who are protecting it."

The capture by the Kurds of Mosul and Kirkuk, the two great cities of northern Iraq, in a couple of days has deeply frightened the Arab inhabitants. In the country many Arab villages are empty with only a few ducks and dogs left behind, though the Kurds maintain that they will distinguish between Arab settlers brought in by Saddam Hussein and Arabs who always lived in this area.

Nervous peshmerga, mostly just arrived, were guarding the road to Mosul from the south-east, which had been reported as safe and had no blown bridges. But as we got close to the city a Kurdish soldier at a checkpoint said: "There are Arabs and Baath party men on the roofs of the houses down the road and they are shooting." He advised us to instead to take a road through some of the Christian villages.

Each checkpoint had its own rumour. At one, we were told that an Arab suicide bomber had tried to kill some Americans and had been shot by them. Another soldier was sure that the Imams in the mosques in Mosul had called on the faithful to kill all peshmerga and foreigners.

At the last peshmerga checkpoint outside Mosul, where demoralising rumours were rife, the large self-confident figure of Bruska Shaways, the deputy commander of the military forces of the Kurdistan Democratic party, which controls western Kurdistan, suddenly appeared. He admitted that the situation had been bad but suggested it was getting better.

Mr Shaways told The Independent on Sunday that after the Iraqi army had fallen apart there was chaos in Mosul, for which he blamed the Americans, who wanted to restrain the official Kurdish peshmerga from entering Mosul.

He complained that the Americans "had said 'wait, wait', and it got later and later, and there was chaos". Finally, they had gained US permission to enter Mosul with the US troops.

It has all been very embarrassing for the Kurdish parties. Their surprise capture of Mosul and Kirkuk has once again raised the spectre of a Turkish invasion. Turkey had been told that the US alone would take and hold these cities and not the Kurds.

Relations between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which suddenly rushed into Kirkuk on Thursday, have also been strained.

Most of the Arab tribal leaders and dignitaries who turned up at the new US base at Mosul airport said that they wanted to see the US troops get rid of the looters.

The centre of the city was fast becoming empty, the pavements covered with paper from all of the ransacked offices. Looters had also ravaged the Kirkuk University campus, although some had heeded appeals by professors to at least leave behind the technical books.

Not quite everybody was glad to see the Americans. At one checkpoint two had raised the Stars and Stripes. Suddenly a man popped up nearby with a large Iraqi flag. He was met with bursts of machine gunfire by peshmerga, who thought he might be about to throw a grenade. But they missed him as he fled.

The writer is co-author with Andrew Cockburn of 'Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession'