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CNN Live Today
As Many as 200,000 Ethnic Kurds on Move in Northern Iraq
Aired March 20, 2003 - 10:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: As many as 200,000 ethnic Kurds on the move we are told in northern Iraq. Some of them headed for rural areas to try protect themselves from the possibility of any kind of military attack.
We have Jane Arraf very close to that border now to tell us a bit more about what she has seen near the town of Doha.
Jane, what are you seeing?
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, there's freezing rain gathering on the mountains near us, but that hasn't deterred people from heading further into the countryside. Now the roads from here, and this is a major city in northern Iraq, are lined with tents, and these are makeshift tents with sometimes 10 children huddled underneath. You can imagine the level of fear that to have people be driven from their homes. They are living in miserable conditions. They are warming their hands by the fire. They are gathering water from streams. One man told us that he had left his job and his house in this city, a comfortable job and house, to take his five children to live in a tent that he had saved from the last refugee crisis in 1991, thinking they might need it again.
Now there are 200,000 people who have left the city alone, altogether an estimated 400,000 at least have left other cities to head to the mountains and the countryside, and hundreds of them are living with almost no protection -- Paula.
ZAHN: You talk about the lack of protection, what will be their access to any food and water if they are camped out there for any period of time?
ARRAF: Definitely a problem. There is food in the country, and particularly in northern Iraq, there is a lot of stockpiled food. But one of the big problems is fuel, keeping warm, two people have already died of exposure, according to authorities, elderly people, and they've only got enough fuel in this region for a week, they say. That includes heating oil as well as gasoline. Now, what they are trying to do now is they started today to built tent cities. Now these are not classic refugees. The classic refugees would be coming from the west of Iraq, crossing the unofficial boarder from Iraqi controlled territory and northern Iraq, but that border has been closed. The Iraqi government is not allowing anyone in or out. There people are internally displaced, Kurds heading further into the countryside, and local authorities are trying to take care of them -- Paula. ZAHN: Jane Arraf, thank you. We're going to keep you posted on what some of the Red Crescent Society is doing to take into account the needs of the people. They are trying to designate sites for what is expected to be millions of refugees for that part of the country, not only going toward the border of Turkey, but Iran as well.
Air power is one of the critical elements in the current confrontation with Iraq. It is delivered partly from ships at sea, partly from air bases on land.
CNN's Bob Franken joins from us from the U.S. air base near the Iraqi border, a very jumpy air base, where they have been in and out of code red for the last several hours. He joins us now live on the videophone.
Bob, what's the latest?
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Six times today, and we heard interview a moment ago, where it becomes tedious, and it already is, but of course, one has to react every time, and so each time a code red or MOP Four occurs, you put on all of your protective gear, and you head for cover, and interestingly, we were in one building which had a TV system here, where you could literally watch the television and it would tell you what the sequence was after 10 minutes ago went down from 4 to 1, so we are really now just able to walk ruined out of our protective gear, and that is all day.
As for the air base itself, it is a major place for launching pad for various fighter bombers. There were about 35 of them that flew last night in what became at 9:00 local time, which was about 1:00 in the afternoon in the Eastern Standard Time zone.
In any case, they switched from Operations Southern Launch, the one that protected no-fly zone to Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the United States has decided to call it. And in any case, that was at 1 a.m. Eastern Time. In any case, we have no indication that there is going to be any escalation. This will be one of the places they would launch many of the attacks. This is where many, many fighter bombers are based, the F-18, F-16 fighters and they can also used as bombers.
And in addition to that, we've got some antitank planes here, as well as some search-and-rescue planes. Earlier, there were some reports about search and rescue. We were not able to determine if, in fact, there were any search and rescue mission look for helicopter had come from here.
As you said when we were talking a moment ago, Judy, this is a very tense place right now, a place that is waiting for final orders to come.
ZAHN: Bob, there has been the suggestion from many folks we've talked to at the White House this morning that this campaign was escalated by as much as two days because of some very important intelligence information that the head of the CIA had and shared with the president, showing a very small window of opportunity perhaps to take out a small complex of buildings where the top Iraqi leadership was meeting. Was there any sense of surprise from members of the Air Force you were with that in fact the campaign started last night?
FRANKEN; We are also hearing however, that...
ZAHN: There's nothing wrong with your television sets, folks. His audio is fading in and out. It's actually quite a testimony to all of our hundreds of people on ground there that we can even get live signals like that up along that Kuwaiti/Iraq border.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired March 20, 2003 - 10:46 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: As many as 200,000 ethnic Kurds on the move we are told in northern Iraq. Some of them headed for rural areas to try protect themselves from the possibility of any kind of military attack.
We have Jane Arraf very close to that border now to tell us a bit more about what she has seen near the town of Doha.
Jane, what are you seeing?
JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, there's freezing rain gathering on the mountains near us, but that hasn't deterred people from heading further into the countryside. Now the roads from here, and this is a major city in northern Iraq, are lined with tents, and these are makeshift tents with sometimes 10 children huddled underneath. You can imagine the level of fear that to have people be driven from their homes. They are living in miserable conditions. They are warming their hands by the fire. They are gathering water from streams. One man told us that he had left his job and his house in this city, a comfortable job and house, to take his five children to live in a tent that he had saved from the last refugee crisis in 1991, thinking they might need it again.
Now there are 200,000 people who have left the city alone, altogether an estimated 400,000 at least have left other cities to head to the mountains and the countryside, and hundreds of them are living with almost no protection -- Paula.
ZAHN: You talk about the lack of protection, what will be their access to any food and water if they are camped out there for any period of time?
ARRAF: Definitely a problem. There is food in the country, and particularly in northern Iraq, there is a lot of stockpiled food. But one of the big problems is fuel, keeping warm, two people have already died of exposure, according to authorities, elderly people, and they've only got enough fuel in this region for a week, they say. That includes heating oil as well as gasoline. Now, what they are trying to do now is they started today to built tent cities. Now these are not classic refugees. The classic refugees would be coming from the west of Iraq, crossing the unofficial boarder from Iraqi controlled territory and northern Iraq, but that border has been closed. The Iraqi government is not allowing anyone in or out. There people are internally displaced, Kurds heading further into the countryside, and local authorities are trying to take care of them -- Paula. ZAHN: Jane Arraf, thank you. We're going to keep you posted on what some of the Red Crescent Society is doing to take into account the needs of the people. They are trying to designate sites for what is expected to be millions of refugees for that part of the country, not only going toward the border of Turkey, but Iran as well.
Air power is one of the critical elements in the current confrontation with Iraq. It is delivered partly from ships at sea, partly from air bases on land.
CNN's Bob Franken joins from us from the U.S. air base near the Iraqi border, a very jumpy air base, where they have been in and out of code red for the last several hours. He joins us now live on the videophone.
Bob, what's the latest?
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Six times today, and we heard interview a moment ago, where it becomes tedious, and it already is, but of course, one has to react every time, and so each time a code red or MOP Four occurs, you put on all of your protective gear, and you head for cover, and interestingly, we were in one building which had a TV system here, where you could literally watch the television and it would tell you what the sequence was after 10 minutes ago went down from 4 to 1, so we are really now just able to walk ruined out of our protective gear, and that is all day.
As for the air base itself, it is a major place for launching pad for various fighter bombers. There were about 35 of them that flew last night in what became at 9:00 local time, which was about 1:00 in the afternoon in the Eastern Standard Time zone.
In any case, they switched from Operations Southern Launch, the one that protected no-fly zone to Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the United States has decided to call it. And in any case, that was at 1 a.m. Eastern Time. In any case, we have no indication that there is going to be any escalation. This will be one of the places they would launch many of the attacks. This is where many, many fighter bombers are based, the F-18, F-16 fighters and they can also used as bombers.
And in addition to that, we've got some antitank planes here, as well as some search-and-rescue planes. Earlier, there were some reports about search and rescue. We were not able to determine if, in fact, there were any search and rescue mission look for helicopter had come from here.
As you said when we were talking a moment ago, Judy, this is a very tense place right now, a place that is waiting for final orders to come.
ZAHN: Bob, there has been the suggestion from many folks we've talked to at the White House this morning that this campaign was escalated by as much as two days because of some very important intelligence information that the head of the CIA had and shared with the president, showing a very small window of opportunity perhaps to take out a small complex of buildings where the top Iraqi leadership was meeting. Was there any sense of surprise from members of the Air Force you were with that in fact the campaign started last night?
FRANKEN; We are also hearing however, that...
ZAHN: There's nothing wrong with your television sets, folks. His audio is fading in and out. It's actually quite a testimony to all of our hundreds of people on ground there that we can even get live signals like that up along that Kuwaiti/Iraq border.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
