UFO Info Week-End

A British spokesman at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar said he knew nothing of British forces attempting to land in northern Iraq

A British spokesman at the Central Command headquarters in Qatar said he knew nothing of British forces attempting to land in northern Iraq.It is not wholly unlikely that British special forces should be operating in northern Iraq though none has been sighted. The United States has been trying to keep Baghdad’s attention at least partly focused on the inactive northern front by using special forces teams usually co-operating with local Kurdish peshmerga.America has also been heavily bombing the positions along the ridge lines and hills where there are Iraqi bunkers.That is not necessarily a prelude to a larger assault in the immediate future. The bombing has also led to an increased flow of Iraqi army deserters and the Iraqis pulling back to closer to Kirkuk. Kurdish sources said that 16 Iraqi soldiers attempting to desert had been shot dead by other Iraqis on the road between the heavily bombed army position at Kalak and Mosul.Kirkuk and Mosul have been targeted in recent days as Washington slowly moves troops into the region to open a new front in its ground war against Iraq, which has been waged mainly from the south via Kuwait.From a hilltop position some nine miles to the north-east of Kirkuk, Reuters reporters watched as pairs of fighter jets circled in the sky above before dropping bombs on or close to Buyuk Hisar, a military stronghold just north of Kirkuk.From close to the village of Cheman, in the Kurd- controlled north of Iraq, the reporters saw nine explosions and heard more than 50 in total during more than two hours of bombing.

They also heard gunfire, but where the sound came from was unclear.Mamad, the mayor of the Kurd-controlled village of Sangaw near Kirkuk, said the raids had been more frequent over the past 24 hours “We have heard them every few hours,” he said. Like many Kurdish officials, Mamad has donned his military fatigues in anticipation of fighting. “This is the heaviest attack so far,” Mam Rostam, a Kurdish commander, said in the town of Chamchamal.. Iraqi Fedayeen paramilitaries used children as human shields during a battle with British troops, a British tank commander has claimed. He said he had been forced to halt any retaliatory fire because of the danger to the children’s lives.”We were just to the south-east of Basra and were being fired on by rocket-propelled grenades I could see the Iraqis ahead of us at a crossroads. They were wearing black jump-suits with red shamaghs – they were Fedayeen and I was preparing to fire at them.”They were crossing the road to try and outflank us on the left and, as they crossed, four or five of them grabbed kids by the scruff of their necks and dragged them across with them. They were using them as human shields so that I had to stop firing The children were only five to eight years old There were lots of women and children there.

It was a busy crossroads, but they didn’t seem to care.”Sgt Baird said that when the Iraqi fighters had crossed the road the children were freed and allowed to run back to their mothers. He then fired at the building in which they were sheltering, destroying the building and killing about six of them.Shortly after, however, his tank was crippled after being hit by up to eight rocket-propelled grenades and an anti-tank missile. The sighting system and his machine gun were destroyed, and the tank was knocked on to its side. “I was too far away to use my machine gun so I asked permission to go forward and got it,” he said.

“I was just past one of the buildings and they fired a rocket-propelled grenade which hit the driver’s side. I reversed and my commander’s periscope got hit by another RPG.”Then the vehicle veered into a ditch and got hit by a further six RPGs and an anti-tank guided weapon They were trying to disable my sights and my machine gun. I was scared.”Then I felt better when my troop leader called up and my squadron leader called up to rescue us and to retrieve our tanks The squadron leader was very calm. He just walked over to us even though there were rounds going off all over.”Sgt Baird witnessed the children being used during a battle on Sunday fought by Royal Marines and tanks from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards which resulted in two villages, Kut Ibrahim and Kuj al-Mun, being captured. Both are suburbs south of Basra.Gunner Stuart Ferguson, 23, from Glasgow, also witnessed the children being used as human shields. “The Iraqis were walking across the road with AK-47s and RPGs in one hand and kids grabbed by the back in the other I couldn’t believe it. I was dumbfounded.”I couldn’t believe that they were going to such lengths.