Mosul defenders on brink of surrender - report

The Iraqi 5th Corps, charged with defending Mosul, Iraq’s third biggest city still in the hands of Saddam Hussein loyalists, was tonight reported to be negotiating surrender.

CNN said the corps, originally 30,000 strong, and the Governor General of the Mosul region in northern Iraq, were prepared to capitulate to US forces tonight but it had been decided it would be safer to wait until daylight.

Before the war the 5th Corps comprised a mechanised division and two light infantry divisions but it is not known how many of its soldiers survived allied bombing raids around Mosul.

Further south today Kurdish guerrilla fighters and US troops poured into the oil-rich city of Kirkuk as residents toppled statues of Saddam and looted government offices in a further sign the Iraqi regime’s control in the north had crumbled.

More than 100 vehicles, from pick-up trucks to a rubbish truck, laden with Kurdish peshmerga fighters drove through Kirkuk’s streets, flying the flags of the two major factions who rule the Kurdish autonomous region to the east: yellow for Kurdistan Democratic Party and green for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

US special operations forces entered the city with Kurdish fighters and later were joined by paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, defence officials in Washington said.

It was unclear whether any Iraqi forces were still in the city. Some shooting was reported earlier on the city’s north-west edge.

Kurds consider Kirkuk – Iraq’s second biggest oil centre – part of their historical ethnic territory but Turkey fears Kurdish moves on Kirkuk, or on the city of Mosul to the north-west, could stoke independence aspirations among Turkey’s own Kurdish population.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had reached an accord with Turkey to have Kurdish forces pull back from Kirkuk. At the same time, the United States agreed that Turkey could send a small group of monitors to Kirkuk.

In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Turkey was watching the situation in northern Iraq very closely.

“We have reminded US officials of their guarantee,” he said. “They have said that they are sending new forces within a few hours and that Kurds will be withdrawn.”

Turkey also fears that Iraqi Kurds might seize the valuable oil resources around Kirkuk. Iraq has been exporting oil through a twin pipeline stretching from the Kirkuk oil fields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan under a UN oil-for-food deal since December 1996. Pumping stopped about 10 days ago.

Southwest of Kirkuk, in Tikrit, there were reports of Iraqi reinforcements converging on the city – Saddam’s hometown and a stronghold, US officials said. There were some organised units of Republican Guard and regular army forces elsewhere in northern Iraq.

US aircraft are aggressively targeting remaining Iraqi army units in the north, officials said, hitting the Republican Guard’s Adnan Division in Tikrit. Coalition roadblocks were also trying to prevent Iraqi leaders from reaching the city and mounting a last stand.

In Washington, Major General Stanley McChrystal, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said commanders were trying to “judge their strength” to determine what air defences Tikrit’s defenders may have in place.

“We are prepared to be very, very wary of what they may have and prepare for a big fight,” McChrystal said.

In Kirkuk, Kurdish families ran out of their homes to cheer and throw roses as the fighters passed.

People threw mud at a tile mural of Saddam, smashing it with rocks and pieces of breeze block, and hitting it with their shoes – a serious insult in the Arab world.

In Arafat Square, the bodies of two dead Iraqi soldiers lay near the base of a statue of Saddam torn down by residents with an old fire engine. Some jumped on the fallen statue, firing celebratory machine-gun fire and hitting it with their shoes. The letters USA were spray painted on the base of the statue.

Resident looted and destroyed the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party and carried away air conditioners and equipment from government offices. Along one road, a boy pushed a cart full of office chairs.

The oil facilities were completely intact around Kirkuk. The flames that burn atop the wells were still blazing, showing that shafts were still pumping oil.

Outside Kirkuk, groups of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of Iraqi soldiers in uniform walked without weapons, past clusters of US special forces troops and a large force of Kurdish guerrilla fighters.

Some of the Iraqi troops waved and shouted “Hurray America and Britain!” as they walked.

Southeast of Kirkuk, on the Iranian border, Kurds and US forces swept unopposed into the strategic city of Khaneqin, and joined with American forces to rout Iraqi soldiers at Altun Kupri, 20 miles north of Kirkuk.

Troops with the Badr Brigades entered the city of about 100,000 people before dawn, followed by a force of thousands of Kurds, witnesses and officials said.

The Badr Brigades are the military wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an Iraqi opposition group backed by the Iranian military. The United States has expressed serious misgivings about the Islamist group’s role in a future Iraq.

Shortly after Iranian TV broadcast images f Baghdad’s fall, people emerged in the streets of Khaneqin and found the soldiers and Baath Party members gone. Residents said the city had been under an Iraqi dusk to dawn curfew for several days.

Control of Kirkuk is the long-held dream of the Kurds, who were harshly oppressed by Saddam’s regime. A 1988 poison gas attack by Saddam’s forces killed tens of thousands of Kurds.