Saddam's troops fire the first shots of the conflict

Two Iraqi helicopters fired machine guns and rockets into three Kurdish villages on the front line north of Kirkuk yesterday, in the first shots intended to kill in the coming war.

''There were two of them, one an attack helicopter and the other normally used for transport, attacking the villages where people herding cattle live," Mohammed Fateh, a local Kurdish military commander, said.

Kurdish officers believe that the Iraqi helicopter attack on the three impoverished and half-ruined villages of Bashtapa, Girdalanka and Sherawa in the hills south-east of Qush Tappa was a desperate effort by the Iraqi army to raise the morale of its men and prove that its firepower is still to be reckoned with.

''Maybe they fear that the Iraqi soldiers want to flee, so they did this to raise their spirits," said General Nasrudin Mustafa, the Kurdish commander for this sector, who had driven up from his headquarters to inspect the front line moments after the strafing took place.

Many people from the villages, in the no-man's land between the Kurdish and Iraqi army forces, had already fled to the nearby city of Arbil, he said.

The Iraqi soldiers facing the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq appear to have recent orders to show they still have teeth. A few days ago they fired mortar shells at tracks used by smugglers near Qush Tappa to bring goods from Kirkuk, 40 miles to the south.

Local commanders of the peshmerga (Kurdish guerrillas), dressed in their traditional baggy trousers, were tense because the Iraqi army had changed the unit facing them and reinforced it. General Mustafa, a burly man in a black and white turban, whom we had accompanied to the front, calmed them, saying: "The Iraqis have only switched units around because they are afraid their soldiers will establish links with the peshmerga. They have also sent in some more tanks and cannon, but not many of either."

The Iraqi army is deeply sensitive to what happens on this section of the front line, because of fears that the peshmerga will take advantage of the US air bombardment to recover villages from which they were deported or forced to flee over the past 25 years. Asked if he plans to attack, General Mustafa smiled and said discreetly: "We are waiting for orders from our leadership."

On the road leading to the front line, which is really a thinly held series of strongpoints, there are many signs of the coming war. Most of the traffic consists of battered pick-up trucks and orange and white taxis, into which families are crammed as they drive to safety in mountain villages. Small boys and sheepdogs are herding flocks from their pastures to places less likely to be caught in the fighting.

In the village of Khalaq Yassin Agha on another part of the front, overlooked by hills held by the Iraqi army, a young man called Nawzad Aziz said: "All the people here have gone. But every family has left one man behind to look after their house."

On the crest of the hill, Iraqi soldiers had just positioned a heavy machine-gun and dug some trenches, but local leaders were surprisingly sanguine. Chato Ramazan, whose headquarters is an old Iraqi army fort of medieval appearance, agreed that most of the people in the village were afraid. "But I don't think the army here will fight," he said. "I think that for the first few hours of the war they might fire at us, but then they will give up." For the moment, however, the government is keeping a tight grip.

As war gets closer, a mass exodus is under way from Arbil, the largest Kurdish city, with a population of 900,000. "All my relatives and friends have left because they are frightened of an attack by poison gas," Assur, a moneychanger, said nervously. "I am going soon myself."

Many of the shops are shut, and shopkeepers are removing valuable stock such as carpets to their homes. Others have bought large quantities of plastic sheeting to put around doors and windows to keep out the gas. They are also storing drinking water at home, in case it becomes contaminated. One former peshmerga said he was hurrying to buy a gun in the local market before that closed as well.