Tribesmen trap 400 Iraqis

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33487, 19 March 1974, Page 13

Tribesmen trap 400 Iraqis

(N .Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) RUZGARI (Northern Iraq). March 18.

A garrison of about 400 Iraqi soldiers near the border with Turkey, surrounded by Kurdish tribesmen, is reported to be running short of supplies.

According to an official at the border, it appears that the Kurds, who, have seized effective control of the mountainous border area in a five-day-old revolt, are trying to starve out the Iraqi troops. Truck-drivers who passed through the garrison, which is two miles south of the town of Zakho, report that the soldiers begged for food and cigarettes, but appeared to have their own water supply. The beleagured, but wellfortified, garrison is one of the last . vestiges ,of Iraqi Government authority in the border zone controlled by the Kurdish Pesh Murga (militia) that is seeking selfrule for Iraq’s 1.5 million Kurds. It straddles the main road between the Turkish frontier, just north of the small village of Ruggari, and the Iraqi provincial capital of Mosul, about 60 miles to the south.

Northern Iraq is again reported quiet today after last week’s fighting, but the Pesh Murga commander has indicated that Mullah Mustafa Barzani, aged 76, the Kurdish nationalist leader, may launch a new offensive on March 26 if the Iraq Gov-

emment fails to honour a 1970 agreement. The pact ended a nine-year revolt, the Bagdad regime accepting partial autonomy for the Iraqi Kurds in return for a military stand-down. The Kurdish tribesmen art no . insisting on an assurate population census for the establishment of an autonomous Kurdistan, a share in oil revenues from the Kirkuk area, and the foundation of Kurdish-language schools. They ignored a draft autonomy plan proposed by Iraq last Monday, and revolted two days later.