Missiles that landed in the mountains of northern Iraq in the early hours of Monday morning are being characterised by authorities in the region as unguided weapons, to be expected in wartime. Lynne O'Donnell in Kore
This is despite the fact that some fell close to government headquarters and American military bases.
Four missiles landed before 5 a.m. on Monday morning in the vicinity of Salahuddin, seat of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and not far from the Harir airbase that has been taken over and converted to an operational centre by the US armed forces.
The anti-missile system at Harir did not lock on to any of the missiles, suggesting that they were not close enough, according to US Air Force officers who met reporters outside the base yesterday in a public relations exercise that appeared timed to demonstrate how relaxed and confident the Americans are.
No casualties have been reported, and leaders of the KDP, which runs the affairs of the region, have been eager to play down the significance of the missiles to avoid panicking an already nervous population.
Mr Hoshyar Zebari, the KDP's director of international relations, said the missiles were "definitely Iraqi" and there was no significance to their presence so close to his office in Salahuddin or to Harir.
"It is a war situation, so there will be missiles and planes. We are used to this, missiles falling over our heads," Mr Zebari said.
Iraqi soldiers on front lines 30km away "just fire at American planes. They have unguided missiles. They can't open their radar. They have fallen on our area before," he said.
He could not say what sort of weapons had fallen on the heads of the his fellow Kurds, but at Kore, 5 km to the south-west, villagers standing around a massive crater hypothesised about whether or not what caused it was one of Saddam Hussein's Al Sammoud missiles.
Pieces of twisted metal taken out of the crater showed traces of red and white paint, but bore no letters or serial numbers, said Mr Mustaffa Mohammed. Just metres from the huge hole in the ground, Mr Baker Sadiq Rasheed's bedroom was little more than a pile of stone, having been destroyed by the force of the blast.
Mr Baker said he was awake and preparing to rise for morning prayers when he heard a deafening whistle that seemed to be closing in on his humble house.
It was 4.45 a.m., he said, as he surveyed the ruins of his bedroom and expressed relief that he was awake and had the wits to act.
"It was horrible. I was terrified. I grabbed the baby and my wife and ran to the other side of the room, and as I did that, the wall fell in and crushed the furniture," he said.
The missiles come days after a bombing last week in Irbil, the capital of the region, that Mr Hoshyar and other local leaders have attributed to "vested interests" and "terrorist groups".
The bomb, which happened at 10.45 last Thursday a kilometre or two from where hundreds of local and international reporters were waiting for President George W. Bush's special envoy to the region, Mr Zalmai Khalilzad.
The shell released a huge plume of white smoke, as one weaponised with deadly chemicals would be expected to, raising suspicions that it had been set to instill fear in the population and send a reminder that Saddam Hussein is widely expected to attack the Kurds with deadly gases.
Mr Zebari said the American government had since pledged to provide the local population with gas masks.