LONDON, Sept. 2 -- Iraqi dissidents said Monday that government troops have carried out summary executions in Arbil, the Kurdish city that fell Saturday to the army and a Kurdish faction backed by Iraq's forces. Mohammed Ali, spokesman for the London office of the Iraqi National Congress umbrella group for the Iraqi opposition, said 96 of its activists in Arbil were executed Sunday. Ali said the 96 were members of a 128-person unit formed by the congress to monitor the cease-fire between two rival Kurdish groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, or KDP, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK. Both groups are affiliated with the congress, whose activists were captured in the Qushtbah camp on the outskirts of Arbil. Witnesses saw them being gunned down by the Iraqi army, Ali said. A U.S. spokesman said American officials were monitoring the reports of executions. 'We've seen, but cannot confirm, reports that Saddam may have executed more than 100 leaders of the Iraqi National Congress,' White House spokesman Mike McCurry told reporters traveling with President Clinton. 'We are looking into those reports but (have) nothing to corroborate them yet.' Iraqi tanks on Saturday attacked the northern city of Arbil in an offensive the army said was to aid the KDP against PUK, which had controlled the city. A KDP spokesman, who earlier denied that Iraqi forces had entered the city, said Sunday that the Iraqi troops had begun withdrawing to their lines, leaving the KDP in control of the city.
'Iraqi forces have pulled back completely from southern outskirts of Arbil to their positions below 36th Parallel line,' a statement by the KDP's London office said Monday. The government-run Iraqi News Agency said Monday in a report monitored in London that after completing its mission, Iraqi soldiers were ordered to withdraw to their original lines.
