'Friendly fire' kills 18 Kurd fighters

DIBAGAH, Iraq — Two U.S. jets bombed a convoy of Kurdish and U.S. troops as it passed through broken Iraqi lines on a key ridge near this village in northern Iraq, killing at least 18 Kurdish fighters and wounding three U.S. special-operations soldiers, Kurdish officials said. A BBC television correspondent was also injured and his Kurdish assistant killed.

It was the worst "friendly fire" incident of the war. Among the 45 Kurds wounded in the attack was Waji Barzani, brother of one of the Kurds' top leaders. The Kurds are fierce adversaries of President Saddam Hussein and have put their combat forces under U.S. command.

Several dozen Kurds and Americans were traveling by truck when the jets struck shortly after midday. Iraqi regular army forces had withdrawn earlier from the ridge, about 25 miles south-southeast of the Kurdish city of Irbil. Spotters noticed Iraqi tanks approaching from the south and called in airstrikes, Kurdish officials said. Instead of hitting the tanks, the planes blasted the convoy. It was a hazy day, and clouds were low.

"This is just a scene from hell here," BBC reporter John Simpson said. "All the vehicles are on fire, there are bodies burning all around me, bits of bodies all around. ... The Americans saw this convoy and they bombed it. They hit their own people," said Simpson, who suffered minor shrapnel wounds.

"Things were going well, and then the flames," said Mahdi Mohammed Ali, a Kurdish commander who narrowly escaped injury when shrapnel flew past his checkpoint 50 yards down the road.

Among the wounded was Waji Barzani, the younger brother of Massoud Barzani, the guerrilla leader who rules this part of northern Iraq. Militias from Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan are taking part in battles in the north.

Waji Barzani heads specially trained KDP units that have been working alongside the Americans. He was flown by U.S. aircraft out of Iraq for medical treatment in Germany, Kurdish officials said.

The move to Dibagah was part of the broadest and deepest thrust south into Iraqi-held land of the war. U.S. jets bombed Iraqi army positions from Ain Sifne, 20 miles north of Mosul, to Khazer, about 25 miles to the city's southeast.

Where the Iraqis abandoned camps and trenches, Kurdish militiamen moved in. On occasion, the Iraqis have counterattacked, as they apparently intended to do here. After the friendly-fire incident, the Kurds and their U.S. allies abandoned Dibagah.

The north is the weakest of the allied fronts. Only about 3,000 U.S. troops are in Kurdish territory.

The Kurds can field a guerrilla force of about 60,000 troops, but they have not all been mobilized. They travel on foot or in all manner of vehicle: truck, pickup, taxi. The Americans have used them largely as an occupying force, rather than as offensive units.

So far, at least 13 of the American soldiers and Marines killed in action in Iraq may have been brought down by friendly fire. An Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crash Wednesday, which took the lives of six soldiers, may also have been caused by friendly fire. The British have lost five service members to friendly fire.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when 35 of the United States' 148 combat casualties were the result of friendly fire, the military pledged to do something. But since then, the Defense Department abandoned its most advanced friendly-fire-avoidance technology program. And the most sophisticated communications systems, designed to give soldiers the broadest understanding of the battlefield, are not being used in Iraq.

"On balance, (combating friendly fire) wasn't quite the priority it should have been," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. "It looks like our investments were not well targeted."

"There have been friendly-fire incidents in every war in the history of mankind," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday. "There are portions of this battlespace that are enormously complex, and human beings are human beings, and things are going to happen."

A U.S. Army War College study in 1995 estimated between 13 and 24 percent of U.S. combat casualties in the 20th century were killed or wounded by their comrades.

In Afghanistan, at least 47 allied troops have died in friendly-fire incidents.

Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers is included in this report.