A military official in this major Kurdish town, which is controlled by Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), said the Kurdish fighters had captured two groups of Iraqi soldiers on Wednesday night and Thursday in Bashiqa, 20 kilometers (13 miles) northeast of the government-held city of Mosul.

The first group was made up of 36 soldiers, including four officers, and the second comprised a colonel named Abdul Karim Jabr Salman and three soldiers, the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

He said another 33 soldiers had voluntarily surrendered to Kurdish fighters in the same region, while 30 militiamen from tribes that cooperate with the Iraqi army had joined KDP ranks in Khazer.

The report, like earlier opposition claims of defection by Iraqi troops since the US-British military campaign was launched March 20, could not be independently confirmed.

An AFP correspondent earlier reported that Kurdish fighters backed by US planes had clashed with Iraqi forces near an army command post in the town of Khazer, where forces loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been holed up since early Thursday and which lies on the road to Mosul.

US-led air raids later targeted Iraqi positions near Khazer as US special forces units were accompanying peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) in their drive toward the main northern city, the correspondent said.

The coalition-backed Kurdish groups, which have controlled an autonomous region in northern Iraq for 12 years, were active on a second front, stepping up their operations around the government-held oil capital of Kirkuk, to the south of Mosul.

SPACE.WIRE