] Two Iraqi helicopters fired machine guns and rockets into
] three Kurdish villages on the front line north of Kirkuk
] yesterday, in the first shots intended to kill in the
] coming war.
]
] ''There were two of them, one an attack helicopter and
] the other normally used for transport, attacking the
] villages where people herding cattle live," Mohammed
] Fateh, a local Kurdish military commander, said.
]
] Kurdish officers believe that the Iraqi helicopter attack
] on the three impoverished and half-ruined villages of
] Bashtapa, Girdalanka and Sherawa in the hills south-east
] of Qush Tappa was a desperate effort by the Iraqi army to
] raise the morale of its men and prove that its firepower
] is still to be reckoned with.

Saddam's troops fire the first shots of the conflict