Troops parachute into northern Iraq

About 1,000 US paratroopers have landed in Kurdish held northern Iraq.

The move is part of the American strategy of opening a northern front against Saddam Hussein's regime.

A unit of the 173rd Airborne, based in Vicenza, Italy, went into the north, said Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Collins, spokesman for the US Army Southern European Task Force.

"Approximately 1,000 troops went in. Really, I can only tell you, 'Yes, they've gone in. They're on the ground,"' he said.

Collins said the troops arrived before midnight local time (2100 GMT).

Witnesses in the area described vehicles carrying Western special forces officers entering a Kurdish military command post, and Kurds near the Bakrajo airstrip, six miles west of Sulaymaniyah, described several planes bringing other foreigners.

A high-level Kurdish official has said the planes landing almost nightly carry US Special Forces operatives who may take part in a ground offensive against Ansar, a Muslim extremist group which is believed to have links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and possibly to Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad.

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