ALMOST by accident, an unruly mob of Kurdish peshmerga “liberated” the oil-rich city of Kirkuk yesterday, and in doing so came uncomfortably close to triggering a war with Turkey.

One day after the fall of Baghdad, the Kurdish militiamen romped into Iraq’s fourth largest city, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were about to cause an international rumpus.

Their move horrified Turkey, whose troops are massed on Iraq’s border. Kirkuk’s oil wealth would make an independent Kurdish state viable, and a Kurdish state would inflame Turkey’s large Kurdish minority. Ankara swiftly declared any Kurdish occupation of Kirkuk to be unacceptable, and said it was sending “military observers” to the city.

In the face of Turkey’s furious protests, Washington promised to send paratroops to remove the peshmerga, and the first arrived last night. Under intense US pressure, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan promised to withdraw its 10,000 fighters today. But it remains to be seen whether they will do so because thousands of Kurds were expelled from the city by Saddam and regard Kirkuk as their rightful home.

It all began innocently enough. Yesterday morning several hundred peshmerga were lounging around near the front at the village of Dubizna, 12 miles north of Kirkuk. They were playing dominoes, napping in the morning sun, and gossiping about the war.

“We are all ready to take Kirkuk,” promised Hassan Abdullah Mahmoud, a 44-year-old fighter. “We’re just waiting for the green light from the Americans. It could be another day or two.” Then a peshmerg walked in the door, and announced: “I think the Iraqis are fleeing. It’s time now.” Five minutes later a chaotic jamboree of vehicles was storming down the road to seize the city from which Saddam Hussein’s forces had melted away.

They entered the city to rapturous applause from its Kurdish civilian majority. Women ululated and kissed the feet of Western journalists as crowds of shouting men clustered around the impromptu relief force. “God bless Haji Bush and Haji Blair. Thank you, thank you for saving us from Saddam and the Baath party: they are devils and inhuman,” cried one man.

Most of the first peshmerga into Kirkuk seemed to embark on an immediate looting spree along with a local mob. A department store and government offices were ransacked, the mêlée working itself into an almost orgiastic fury, smashing windows and destroying furniture as an outlet for their passions.

Ignored by looters, a body lay prone by the central Tabak Chaly bridge over the River Khasa. A balding man in grey slacks and city shoes, he had been snatched from his Nissan by a group of armed men and shot on the pavement. His attackers stole his car and roared away.

“I think he was an Arab,” explained a Kurdish civilian, Saba Mohammed, who placed a blanket on the bloody corpse. “I wanted to cover him as it’s an ugly sight for people to see.”

Elsewhere, in a Baath party headquarters on the east bank of the Khasa, a middle-aged woman, Khanim Shareef Abdullah, clubbed and slashed frenziedly at a huge portrait of Saddam Hussein. Her husband and son had died in 1988. Kurdish deserters from the Iraqi Army, they had been gassed in the Halabja attack.

“I’ve been waiting for this day,” she gasped between breaths. “I always knew it would come.”

There appeared little resistance. Most of the army had withdrawn towards Tikrit, leaving only a paltry force of bedraggled conscripts behind.

“The army started leaving last night and concluded their withdrawal at about 11 this morning,” one man said. “They looked in a bad state. Some were fleeing down the road to Tikrit on foot without shoes or weapons.”

The Kurds’ celebratory mood was conspicuously absent in the city’s Arab quarters. Here, as a cacophany of happy gunfire and car horns sounded elsewhere, groups of Arab men stared sullenly at the peshmerga columns, exuding hostility and fear.

Gunfights erupted sporadically in these sectors. A group of eight men opened fire on Kurds in the governor’s offices, hitting a civilian in the neck. Three were killed by the peshmerga. The others fled.

There was confusion about how far the Iraqis had pulled back. “We don’t know if they still have a presence at the oilfields or not,” Falah Abbas, a peshmerga commander, said. “It’ll take us a couple of days to secure the area.”

In the central square, a crowd ringed a statue of Saddam as the more athletic scrambled over his head, beating it with shoes and horse whips. Someone sprayed “USA” at his feet, just in time for the arrival of US special forces. Within an hour the statue had been toppled and beheaded.

Among all the confusion and criminality, some at least had a political vision of what to do. “We’re going to get our people distributed thoughout the city, get everything working, and rearrange ourselves in Kirkuk within four days,” Jalal Jawher, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s minister for industry and energy, told his aides.

In the absence of any serious coalition force in Kirkuk the city is ripe for the taking.

As dusk fell and the looting continued, it was a 28-year-old doctor at the city hospital, Wisam Saood, who displayed real dignity. His gloves were covered in blood from treating gunshot wounds, and he looked so tired I thought he might fall over.

“This is nothing,” he explained. “I’ve been doing eight-hour shifts since the war began. I’ve usually treated about ten war-wounded a day, soldiers and civilians. And there have been a lot of deaths. Right now I don’t care about the politics. All I’m worried about is my wife and children living in Mosul.

“But I can tell you one thing. This is a miserable situation. The Iraqi people don’t know who to follow. They are torn only between Saddam and America. They deserve better than both.”

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