Kurdish forces take full control of Kirkuk in northern Iraq

Baghdad, June 12 (IANS) Two days after militants took control of the Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul, Kurdish security forces Thursday seized the country’s northern city of Kirkuk after the Iraqi army withdrew from its military base here.

“The Kurdish Peshmerga has taken full control of the city of Kirkuk, after Iraqi federal soldiers withdrew yesterday,” Xinhua quoted the source as saying Thursday.

The Peshmerga are the security forces mandated to protect the autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq’s north.

The Kurdish security forces’ takeover of Kirkuk, around 264 km from the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, raises concerns that the central government’s forces are losing their battle against militants in the region.

The Iraqi army, police and border guards also withdrew late Wednesday night from their positions on the border with Syria near the city of Qaim, some 330 km northwest of Baghdad.

Also late Wednesday, the militants gained new cities and towns in Salahudin province, including the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s hometown and provincial capital Tikrit and some other cities and towns.

The troops withdrew a day after hundreds of militants Tuesday stormed the predominantly Arab towns of Hawijah, Zab, Riyadh, Abbasi and Rashad in south and west of the city of Kikruk, the police said.

The militants seized the towns without resistance by the Iraqi security forces, the police said.

The soldiers and policemen withdrew before the arrival of the militant groups, a sign reflecting that the Iraq’s forces were ill-prepared to fend off the militants.

The ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk is among the disputed areas claimed by three of Iraq’s diverse ethnic groups, the Kurds, the Arabs and the Turkomans.

The Kurds want to incorporate the areas bordering the Kurdistan region, but their claim to the land is fiercely opposed by the central government in Baghdad.

Iraq plunged into security crises last week following bloody clashes between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of gunmen who took control of several neighbourhoods in western part of Mosul and expanded later to other areas after the Iraqi security forces withdrew from the city.