And you stand here insulting them with this shit.” He added: “I am a Muslim .. and I know this region. That woman is seriously abusing her right of speech.”Captain Brian Lewis, a tank commander, said: “All we are trying to do is create the conditions for representative government.”. Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk, the oil capital of northern Iraq, bringing joyful street celebrations yesterday. Kirkuk is the first northern Iraqi city to fall, but its capture by the Kurds could prompt an invasion by the Turkish army. But they have already appointed their own governor, and it appears clear they intend to remain in administrative control of the city.There was little sign yesterday that the thousands of soldiers who make up the joint forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were making much effort to stop the widespread looting.

Within the space of five minutes I saw Kurds steal a fire engine, an agricultural thresher and an Iraqi Airways bus. Other vehicles drove past piled with mattresses and chairs stolen from abandoned Iraqi offices and military camps.The Kurdish parties claimed that they had co-ordinated their capture of Kirkuk with the US but there were very few American soldiers in evidence on the streets of the city or in the oilfield to the west. In Washington the Pentagon said US special forces were with the Kurdish fighters as they entered the city.The first news of the surprise Kurdish attack on Kirkuk came at midday yesterday. They had taken Mahmour, a small town to the west of Kirkuk, overnight after heavy US bombing. When we drove towards Kirkuk, peshmerga (Kurdish soldiers) were at first uncertain that the city had been taken. Villages of Arab settlers, who had replaced Kurds in the region over the past 20 years, were empty apart from a few ducks and stray dogs. Only as we began to enter the oilfields did it became clear that Kirkuk had been captured.

“It is finished, the way to Kirkuk is open,” said an oncoming driver.Little grey fortresses, looking like small medieval castles, guard the road through the oilfields but they had been abandoned by the Iraqi army. The road soon became crowded with trucks piled with loot, most of it of little value, such as chairs and filing cabinets. The looters had not even paused to demolish the portraits of Saddam Hussein beside the road.By the time we reached the centre there were only intermittent bursts of machine-gun fire. The Kurds in the street appeared astonished at the speed with which the Iraqi army had fled and the Kurds had entered the city. “At 8am I went to my work and heard the B-52 aircraft making a bombing strike in top of the mountain,” said Ahmed Rasul, standing in a street of shuttered shops. “It was after that that the Baath party and the army escaped, suddenly I saw the peshmerga.”Refugees long expelled from Kirkuk had already heard the news and returned.