With The Troops: A Family's Last Stand for Saddam

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Knowing that U.S.-led Kurdish soldiers had entered Kirkuk, Abdul Karim Hamdaniy and his son Ahmed donned plain khaki military uniforms, strapped on ammunition-filled webbing and, with Kalashnikov rifles in hand, headed out of their homes.

The faithful father-and-son team were going to die for a dying regime. "They were real members of the party, so they fought to the end," said Talat Haias, a city resident, many hours later as he stood over Ahmed's body, sprawled as though crucified in a blood-pooled halo on a suburban street. The two had taken up positions near the Baath Party center in Kirkuk's Huria district last Thursday and had fired at people passing by. Eventually separated, the duo hung on for about four hours before teams of Kurdish peshmerga (those who face death) shot them. "We're happy they've killed them because they've done many bad and cruel things," said Haias.

The multipronged assault on Kirkuk began before daylight. U.S. special forces led battalions of peshmerga, who for the most part met no Iraqi resistance. To the east, however, it was a different story, as Iraqi soldiers tried to mount a last stand. They were positioned at the city's edge, having retreated there from bases farther afield amid intense bombing that began in March. This meant Kirkuk's first line of defense was now also its last.

When the assault kicked off, close to 300 peshmerga from one of the Kurds' top units raced to the Iraqi line. The fighters and the U.S. special forces leading them found themselves in a bigger battle than they had anticipated. With two tanks firing as they withdrew, the Iraqis yielded their outer ring of bunkers but stood fast on the city's outskirts. Iraqi soldier Riaz Jihad Zahir explains why he and his comrades stayed. "The officers had told us Baghdad had fallen, but they said the execution squads would kill us if we left," he says.

Five hours into the attack, the advance halted in its tracks. Around 10 a.m., the commanding team of special forces abandoned the eastern front, leaving Kurdish soldiers to hold the line. "We're going back to the 6th element. Let's go. Let's go," shouted the team leader, waving his men into their white Land Rovers. The order wasn't well received by all the special forces. "I'm telling you we're leaving," the leader breathlessly insisted as Iraqi artillery roared in. An argument erupted, with an angry U.S. soldier screaming "Is this how we lead by example?" The team leader called on his subordinate to "get with the program."

Forty-five minutes later, the Kurds began firing rockets into the Iraqi zone. Shortly afterward, a B-52 trailing four white vapors laid a carpet of perhaps a dozen bombs on the Iraqi trenches. Black clouds boiled up as the peshmerga whooped from their hilltop trenches that hours before had been occupied by the Iraqis being bombed. "This attack is a sacred thing," said Ismael Mohammed. He was fighting to return to the home in Kirkuk he had been driven out of seven years before. Kurdish commander Mam Rostam, a nom de guerre meaning Uncle Rostam, reveled in the momentum of the push on Kirkuk. "My soul is returning," he told his staff in the bunker.