12 June 2014

Iraqi Kurdish forces say they have taken full control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk as the army flees before an Islamist offensive nearby.

"The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga," Kurdish spokesman Jabbar Yawar told Reuters. "No Iraq army remains in Kirkuk now."

Kurdish fighters are seen as a bulwark against Sunni Muslim insurgents.

Meanwhile, Iraq's parliament has postponed a vote on a call by PM Nouri Maliki for a state of emergency.

The fall of Mosul, the country's second city, to the Islamists sent shockwaves across the Middle East.

Kirkuk and the surrounding province of Tamim are at the heart of a political and economic dispute between Iraq's Arabs and Kurds.

_____________________

As many as 500,000 people have been forced to flee the Iraqi city of Mosul after hundreds of Islamist militants took control of it, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says.

Troops were among those fleeing as the jihadists from the ISIS group took the city and much of Nineveh province.

The head of the Turkish mission in Mosul and dozens of consulate officials have been seized.

PM Nouri Maliki has asked parliament to declare a state of emergency.

The US said the development showed ISIS was a threat to the entire region.

Led by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the insurgents are believed to be planning to push further south, to the capital Baghdad and regions dominated by Iraq's Shia Muslim majority, whom they regard as "infidels".

But it appears the insurgents want to avoid tangling with Iraqi Kurds - a more cohesive fighting force - in provinces bordering Nineveh province where Mosul is located, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Kurdish-run Irbil.

A new insurgent offensive could come from the west, where they control the city of Falluja, 69km (43 miles) from Baghdad, our correspondent adds.

Washington says it is considering further assistance to Iraq in fighting the militants, without giving details.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middl...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middl...

_________________________

Zalmay Khalilzad is former US Ambassador to Iraq.