in the region as Washington reported that 1,000 paratroopers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade had landed overnight in northern Iraq. Reuters correspondent Jon Hemming saw a U.S. warplane drop eight bombs over Domiz, a small town or military installation north of Mosul under Baghdad‘s control and close to the front line with Kurdish-ruled northern Iraq. Heavy bombing was also reported on the road to the Baghdad-controlled northern oil capital of Kirkuk. Harir is around 70 km north east of Arbil, at an altitude of approximately 1,500 metres. The Kurdish-ruled zone occupies the three northernmost Iraqi provinces of Dohuk, Arbil and Sulaimaniya. It has been self-ruled since 1991, under the protection of a U.S. and British-patrolled no-fly zone, following a failed Kurdish uprising against Saddam‘s rule at the end of the Gulf War.

Analysts said the U.S. deployment in northern Iraq would help stabilise the Kurdish region and could be used as a launch pad to take Iraq‘s northern oilfields. But they said it would take time to build up a decisive force in the north.

U.S. military planners had originally hoped to send some 60,000 U.S. troops into northern Iraq from Turkey, giving them an option to launch a pincer movement on Baghdad. But the Turkish parliament rejected the plan. The strategy was further complicated by Turkey‘s insistence that it send its own troops into northern Iraq, ostensibly to prevent a flood of refugees heading to Turkey and to protect the region‘s Turkmen minority, ethnically close to Turks. Iraqi Kurds are suspicious of Turkey and have vowed to fight any Turkish incursion, which they say would amount to military occupation. Turkey has a large Kurdish minority of its own and fears that Iraqi Kurds want to set up a sovereign Kurdish state.

The United States has already established a Military Coordination and Liaison Command in northern Iraq, led by Major General Pete Osman. He said that his role was primarily humanitarian – an apparent notice to Turkey that the United States was fully able to cope with refugee and other issues alone.

BAGHDAD – Twenty-four hours after two, possibly rogue U.S., missiles slammed into a busy market area in a residential northern Baghdad suburb on Wednesday, killing at least 15 civilians, distraught Iraqis wandered stunned through the scenes of carnage. There is sorrow at the loss of loved ones, and fury at U.S. President George W. Bush, who had promised to limit the loss of innocent civilian life. Witnesses blamed U.S. missiles, but U.S. military spokesman Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said the explosions may have been caused by a stray Iraqi missile or deliberate Iraqi sabotage. The strikes, which caused the highest known civilian casualty toll in a single attack in Baghdad in the war so far, devastated a poor residential area in the al-Shaab district. At least 15 people were burned to death and 30 more wounded.

The international media watchdog Reporters without Frontiers (RsF) has condemned the U.S. bombing on Wednesday of Iraq‘s television station, saying Washington violated the Geneva Convention by targeting it. RsF, adding its voice to those of other media and rights bodies, said that even media considered to broadcast propaganda deserved to be protected.

Reuters