Iraqi Kurds 'fully control Kirkuk'
Kurdish fighters outside Kirkuk on Wednesday
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 who seized towns in the region this week.
The fall of the city of Mosul 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.
• Under Saddam Hussein's programme of "Arabisation", Kurds were driven from Kirkuk and replaced with settlers from the south, and the Iraqi government continues to assert control over nearby oilfields, with the backing from the local Turkmen community
• The Kurdistan Regional Government, which administers three provinces to the north-east, is pushing for Arabisation to be reversed
• In May 2013, Kurdish fighters took up positions on the outskirts of Kirkuk after Iraqi security forces were redeployed to deal with Sunni militants elsewhere
• A census and referendum on the affiliation of the province has been repeatedly delayed by the broader political crisis in Iraq