Speaking during a rare appearance before the press, seven special forces officers said Ansar al-Islam (Supporters of Islam) was now "neutralised", even though many of the group's fighters may have escaped over the border to neighbouring Iran.

"It was pretty damn succesful. In a period of one-and-a-half days, a terrorist organisation that has had a grip on this region was rooted out and neutralised," said one of the officers during the briefing in Halabja, a town in the southeast of the Iraqi Kurd autonomous zone.

"There was a lot of fighting. The Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda were not a pushover," the officer said. None of the team, decked out in battle fatigues, gave their names.

Citing "anecdotal evidence", the team said there were "several hundred" Ansar casualties. The group had an estimated 700 members, of which 75-100 were believed to be al-Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan.

Scores of US Special Forces were flown into the Kurdish north to help a pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) defeat Ansar, a Taliban-style group which emerged in late 2001 and has been blamed for a spate of suicide bombings and assassinations.

Ansar's presence in mountainous terrain between Halabja and the Iranian border was one of the many reasons given by Washington as justification for an invasion of Iraq.

The group featured in a presentation to the United Nations Security Council in February by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said it could potentially channel weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The attack on Ansar included some 8-10,000 PUK peshmerga fighters, and the special forces contribution was "less than one percent of that number", the US officers said.

They said initial finds in Ansar areas, captured last week after a six-pronged assault backed up by AC-130 gunships and B-52 bombers on an area totalling some 400 square kilometers (180 square miles), had yielded valuable evidence.

"There were things found on the site that to my mind confirmed chemical or biological weapons activity. Much of the evidence is under the rubble and the exploitation of the site is ongoing," one of the team said, adding that soil samples and material evidence had been sent to the US for analysis.

PUK military sources said they had also found a number of foreign passports and lists of contact numbers and addresses in the United States and Europe -- which they assert backs up their claims that Ansar is an international menace and not just a local irritation.

Despite the upbeat presentation, the US team was cautious when asked to respond to reports that scores of Ansar fighters -- as well as some leaders of the group -- had escaped to Iran.

"We know some of them were able to escape over the border to Iran," one of the officers said, but diplomatically emphasised that the frontier -- a long ridge of snow-capped mountain peaks -- was "very porous and difficult to control".

Iran denies allegations that it supports Al-Ansar.

The ousting of the group from its territory will also enable the PUK and US special forces here to focus their attentions on the northern front against Baghdad.

However,the Special Forces team refused to discuss future operations.

SPACE.WIRE