Iraqi forces have reportedly advanced on Kirkuk’s oilfields and an airbase after the prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, ordered his army to “impose security” on the Kurdish city after a recent vote for independence.
Kurdish and Iraqi officials both reported that forces began moving at midnight on Sunday, with state TV reporting that “vast areas” of the region had been seized, a claim disputed by the
Kurds.
Military sources on both sides reported exchanges of Katyusha rocket fire to the south of the provincial capital. Multiple Kurdish peshmerga fighters were injured in the clashes, a local security source told Agence France-Presse.
The governor of Kirkuk, Najmaldin Karim, urged the public to come out on to the streets and said he was confident Peshmerga forces would protect the city.
“We saw some of the young people who expressed their readiness to help their peshmerga brothers to defend the land,” he told Rudaw, a Kurdish media network.