"This began a few hours ago, I don't think the city has fallen yet," a KDP official, who asked not to be named, told AFP in Kirkuk by telephone.

The claim came soon after US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said US and Kurdish forces had begun moving into Mosul on Thursday, as some Iraqi forces surrendered their weapons along the "green line" separating the Iraqi and Kurdish-controlled areas of the north.

SPACE.WIRE