U.S. special operations troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters seized a strategic hilltop near the northern Iraqi-held city of Mosul early Wednesday, a senior Kurdish leader said. The area called Maqloub had been heavily defended by Iraqi forces and served as a hub for air defenses against coalition air strikes as well as a munitions center, said Hoshyar Zebari, a leading member of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party. It is about 10 miles northeast of the commercial center of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city.

"From our perspective it was the most important gain ... so far," Zebari said. "This shows the crumbling of the northern front."

Control of this hilltop means that no Iraqi defenses remain between Kurdish-U.S. invasion forces and Mosul, Zebari said. It will allow passage for people wishing to escape the embattled city, which has been repeatedly targeted in coalition airstrikes, and could be a prelude to U.S.-led forces entering the city on the ground, Zebari said.

But he stressed there would be no unilateral Kurdish move, saying the operation was being coordinated with the Pentagon .
Coalition airstrikes preceded the early morning ground assault, and there was not much resistance, suggesting "the demoralizing situation of the Iraqi army," he said.

He had no information about casualties or prisoners.

Kurdish forces have also tightened their ring around the key oil center of Kirkuk, and were within sight of the city Tuesday following heavy coalition airstrikes on front-line Iraqi positions.

Control over the northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk and the oil fields that lay between them is the main objective in the northern campaign to topple President Saddam Hussein's forces. Kurds consider both cities part of their historical ethnic territory.

Coalition warplanes have repeatedly bombed targets in northern Iraq, but the advance of ground forces has been slow because of sticky regional politics. The arrival of U.S. invasion forces in Baghdad, however, may signal a more aggressive northern campaign. The estimated 70,000 Kurdish fighters in the region have insisted they are ready any time.

The Pentagon originally planned to send up to 60,000 ground troops into the Kurdish zone from Turkey to squeeze Baghdad from two directions. But anti-war sentiments in Turkey swayed its parliament to reject Washington's proposal.

Turkish leaders object to any Kurdish move on Kirkuk, Iraq's No. 2 oil region. Turkey worries that stronger and richer Iraqi Kurds could stoke aspirations for independence among Kurdish groups elsewhere - especially Kurds in Turkey.

Turkey has said it would consider sending its military into northern Iraq against the Kurds if Kurdish forces seized the northern oil fields.

With air the only option, about 1,200 U.S. paratroopers dropped into northern Iraq on March 27 to join the special forces already in the region. More soldiers have been sent, but so far, coalition strength in the region has been too limited to launch serious ground assaults against the heavily defended cities.

Saddam's regime has long oppressed the 4 million Kurds living in northern Iraq. The worst moment came in 1988, when his fighters are believed to have killed 150,000 Kurds, using chemical weapons against some. Since the end of the first Iraq war, U.S.- and British-enforced no-fly zones over Kurdish territory have prevented Saddam from reclaiming the area.

In recent years, the Iraqi government has expelled thousands of Kurds from the oil-rich Kirkuk area and settled Arabs in their place. As many as 120,000 Kurds have been forced from their homes since 1991, Human Rights Watch reported.

PHOTO CAPTION


Kurdish peshmerga fighters rest at the front line near Tawer Bariz, southeast of Kirkuk, Northern Iraq Tuesday April 8, 2003. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)