"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 the city, as some Iraqi forces surrendered their weapons along the "green line" separating the Iraqi and Kurdish-controlled areas of the north.

A battalion of US army paratroopers followed Kurdish forces into Kirkuk Thursday after Iraqi forces that had been defending the city "drifted away," Rumsfeld said.

Other US and Kurdish forces were being welcomed hours later by Iraqis as they began entering Mosul, he said.

"Within recent hours, I am told that in Mosul there appears to be an opportunity for the regular Iraqi forces to turn in their weapons and no longer pose a threat," he said after meeting with members of Congress.

The fall of Kirkuk came amid intensive US air strikes in the north to destroy some of Iraq's last organized military forces, stationed around the rich oil fields that lie between Kirkuk and Mosul.

SPACE.WIRE