Kurds start releasing Iraqi prisoners of war
ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) began on Saturday releasing Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered or were captured during recent fighting in northern Iraq, a KDP official said.
The 750 soldiers held at a camp in Ashkawtan, some 100 kilometers (63 miles) north of KDP-controlled Arbil, have been divided into three groups according to their places of residence, Akram Sufi, the KDP official in charge of the camp, told AFP.
The KDP has shared control of an enclave in northern Iraq with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) since 1991. Both allied themselves with US forces in the war that toppled Saddam Hussein last week.
Sufi said one group comprising residents of the northern region of Mosul were being escorted to their homes in buses provided by a Swedish NGO. The same applies to inhabitants of the northern city of Kirkuk.
Residents of Baghdad and southern provinces, forming the third batch, would be taken to the Iraqi capital, and southerners would then have to find their own means of returning home, he said.
The KDP is also holding an unspecified number of Iraqi army officers in a different site but Sufi said they too would be set free within days.