Culminating a four-day drive to prevent the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan from mounting a counteroffensive to recapture Irbil, KDP forces first took a key road junction at Degala, then raced on another 20 miles east without meeting significant resistance to capture Kuysanjaq in less than six hours.
KDP television said the party's flag was raised atop a nearby mountain to celebrate the victory. Party officials said the rival force suffered 400 casualties, including dead, wounded or captured, in the fighting yesterday, but they provided no estimate of their own casualties and their report could not be independently confirmed.
KDP officials, who earlier had spoken of wanting to capture a key dam in the east, began hinting that their forces might push on to Sulaymaniyah, the PUK's remaining stronghold.
U.N. officials and foreign correspondents covering the fighting reported finding no visible Iraqi army presence yesterday despite PUK leader Jalal Talabani's insistence that Iraqi tanks and artillery were involved. The reporters said they saw few signs of serious fighting along the key highway, but did hear distant artillery.
Iraq claimed it fired antiaircraft weapons at U.S. and allied aircraft patrolling "no-fly" zones over its territory yesterday. The Iraqi fire missed and the planes fled, the official Iraqi News Agency said. Iraq made the same claim on Friday and Saturday, also saying there were no hits. American pilots have said they detected no Iraqi response to their sorties.
In Washington, U.S. officials were cautious about reports of any large Iraqi role in the latest fighting. They warned it would be a mistake for the United States to intervene in the Kurdish fighting without establishing that the forces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were playing a major role.
"We have always said that we will not stand idly by when (Saddam) turns against his people," said Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on NBC's "Meet the Press." "What we have to see now is whether what we are witnessing is one Kurdish faction engaging in fighting against another, or to what degree Saddam Hussein is involved in it."
Shalikashvili said the United States has a humanitarian interest in the Kurds living in the "safe haven" in northern Iraq established by U.S. allies after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But he said U.S. interests in southern Iraq, which borders Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, "are much more sharply defined."
U.S. officials say they have not established the extent of Saddam's role in the latest fighting between the KDP, which has invited Saddam's help, and the rival PUK, which reportedly has turned to Iran for assistance.
"My judgment is that we should not be involved in the civil war in the north," Defense Secretary William Perry said on the CBS's "Face the Nation." He said the United States should focus its attention on the south, "the strategic heartland of Iraq."
The reporters covering the fighting near here said resistance collapsed once Degala was captured. Thereafter KDP guerrillas on flatbed trucks and buses raced forward, stopping only for advance patrols to secure the next section of highway before pressing forward.
A KDP spokesman recalled yesterday night that party leader Massoud Barzani had warned last Wednesday that he might use military means unless the PUK restored electricity from the Dukan dam for the city and province of Irbil. The dam is less than 50 miles east of Kuysanjaq.
Iraqi Energy Minister Idris Hadi said in a midday interview that repair teams had completed restoring lines damaged in the fighting for Irbil eight days ago. Despite Talabani's assurances that power would be restored, Hadi said Irbil, a city of 750,000, remained without running water.
KDP officials said that Barzani's forces might push all the way to Sulaymaniyah in a bid to end the "no war, no peace" feuding of the past two years between the two parties.
But the officials also conceded that any drive against the Kurds' cultural capital might provoke a repetition of the exodus at the end of the Gulf War, when millions of Kurds headed for the Iranian and Turkish borders after a guerrilla uprising collapsed.
Talabani has warned in recent days that he would accept aid "from the devil himself," in an apparent reference to help from Iran, in case his position becomes untenable.