One of Ours

Thousands of Iraqi Kurds have fled homes in Fallujah to northern Iraq after being threatened by Arab insurgents for supporting the coalition and refusing to fight against the U.S. military.

More than 2,000 people have arrived since April 9 in the Kurdish town of Kalar...

...Displaced and traumatized families arriving from Fallujah in Kalar yesterday said a mixture of die-hard Saddam loyalists and foreign "mujahideen" were accusing Kurdish residents in the city of being traitors and collaborators.

Others said the insurgents had chosen to conduct their attacks on U.S. forces from the rooftops and narrow lanes of the mainly Kurdish Jolan district — which saw the fiercest fighting between guerrillas and Marines — knowing that any retaliatory fire would destroy Kurdish houses and civilians.

"On the first day of the fighting, a masked man came to my husband and told him either to fight the Americans, leave the city or die," said Sobyar Abdullah, who escaped Fallujah on foot with her husband and five children.

"He demanded that we leave our house, so the fighters could take control."

Mrs. Abdullah said four masked guerrillas then charged through their living room and up to the roof, from which they fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. forces before moving to another house.

"My children were terrified," she said. "We had just got out when the Americans fired back. Now everything is rubble."

Their lives in turmoil after the war to remove Saddam and the recent fighting, Mrs. Abdullah and her family refused to blame the destruction of her home on U.S. forces.

"They are not Americans; they are angels sent from God to free us from Saddam," she said...

...many of the displaced families were too terrified of reprisals by Arab fighters to return to their homes in the volatile heart of the Sunni triangle.

"Much of the Arab world has hailed the Fallujah insurgents as heroes fighting the U.S. occupation, but these stories of fear and intimidation by their Arab compatriots tell a different story...

...Malihah Osman...said graffiti promoting the killing of Kurds had begun to appear on walls near the home she abandoned in Fallujah...

...Kurds, who make up about 20 percent of the Iraqi population, were strong supporters of the war to remove the former regime and have remained staunchly supportive of U.S. forces.

But many have been alarmed by the resurfacing of anti-Kurdish sentiments among Sunni Arabs and supporters of Sheik al-Sadr.

Gunmen yesterday assassinated a prominent Kurdish official in Kirkuk in a drive-by shooting that also killed his driver and wounded his wife.

Also, a bomb exploded in front of the headquarters of one of the two main Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.