Iraq moves to retake Kirkuk

The Iraqi army launched an operation to retake Kurdish-held positions around the disputed oil city of Kirkuk on Friday amid a bitter row with the Kurds over a vote for independence last month.

A senior Kurdish official said thousands of heavily armed fighters had been deployed to resist the offensive "at any cost" and called for international intervention with the federal government in Baghdad to prevent the confrontation worsening.

But a Kurdish pullback, as reported by local media, appeared to have avoided a military confrontation.

The Iraqi army and the Kurdish peshmerga have been key allies of the US-led coalition in its fight against the Islamic State (IS) group and the threat of armed clashes between them poses a major challenge for Western governments.

Ethnically divided but historically Kurdish-majority Kirkuk is one of several regions that peshmerga fighters took over from the Iraqi army in 2014 when the jihadists swept through much of northern and western Iraq.

Baghdad is bitterly opposed to Kurdish ambitions to incorporate the oil-rich province in its autonomous region in the north and has voiced determination to take it back.

"The Iraqi armed forces are advancing to retake their military positions that were taken over during the events of June 2014," an army general told AFP by telephone, asking not to be identified.

He said federal troops had already taken one base west of Kirkuk on Friday morning after peshmerga fighters withdrew during the night without a fight.

The peshmerga's Kirkuk commander, Sheikh Jaafar Mustafa, said his forces had withdrawn but will fight if Iraqi forces advance more.

The tensions come as Kurdish voters on September 25 overwhelmingly backed independence in a non-binding referendum that the federal government condemned as illegal.

A top aide to Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani vowed that peshmerga forces would defend their positions "at any cost".

"Thousands of heavily armed peshmerga units are now completely in their positions around Kirkuk," Hemin Hawrami said. "Their order is to defend at any cost."

Hawrami urged the international community to intervene and call on the Iraqi prime minister to "order PMF to pull back if he can or if they listen to him".