US renews missile attack on Islamic 'terror group'

The US launched missiles for the second day yesterday against an Islamic group based in Kurdistan which is accused by the US of having links with al-Qa'ida and Baghdad.

The US attacked positions of Ansar al-Islam in their mountain stronghold close to the Iranian border. There were also ground attacks by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which controls the surrounding territory.

At the same time American planes started landing on small airfields in Kurdistan, bringing in soldiers expected to play a role in opening up a northern front. Hoshyar Zebari, a high-level Kurdish official, confirmed that several dozen US soldiers had landed at Harir, a small airstrip in the mountains 40 miles from Arbil. Scores of US troops also flew in to Bakrajo airstrip near the eastern city of Sulaymaniyah. Al-Jazeera television said yesterday another plane with 280 soldiers on board had landed.

There was no visible activity in Harir yesterday and the Kurdish guards said they could not admit anybody to the airstrip. The US troops were originally meant to come two months ago, but their arrival was delayed while the US tried to get Turkish agreement for military support.

The soldiers who arrived at Bakrajo did everything possible to preserve secrecy, flying in on four planes which landed without lights and took off immediately afterwards.

The assault on Ansar al-Islam did not get off to a good start. Of the 57 people killed by US missiles and bombs, all but two were from another Islamic group called the Komala Islami, a purely Kurdish group, who were sleeping in their headquarters building. Before the war began, Komala Islami announced that they did not want to fight the US.

Ansar retaliated for the air strikes on Friday night with a car bomb which exploded at a checkpoint, killing five people, including Paul Moran, an Australian cameraman.

Ansar was yesterday reported to have retreated into the mountains in the face of a PUK offensive. In the past, Ansar has shown that, though only a few hundred strong, it can fight hard and has used suicide bombing and assassination as effective weapons.

Ansar sprang to prominence when it was accused by the US of having links to both al-Qa'ida and the government in Baghdad, though this seemed an unlikely alliance. Mullah Krekar, the leader, has vehemently denied this from Norway, where he is exiled. It is more likely that the group depends on a measure of Iranian support and tolerance.

Mullah Krekar has always declared that his aim was "to bring down the Iraqi regime and replace it with an Islamic regime". Within its enclave, Ansar has carried out measures similar to those applied by the Taliban in Afghanistan, such as banning music, dancing, alcohol and television.

It is possible that some of the recently arrived US troops will be used against Ansar, which was denounced by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, as having links to the Iraqi government. This is an unlikely thesis given that it is primarily a Kurdish and Islamic organisation, not a combination likely to endear it to Saddam Hussein.

Its prominence is probably due to a decision by the PUK that the existence of an extreme Islamic group on its territory could be used as a propaganda tool to mobilise US opinion against Iraq.