"The situation is under control. Overnight was much calmer," asserted General Rostam Hamid Rahim, a top commander with the pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

Rostam asserted that Kurdish fighters, whose takeover of the oil-rich city has rung alarm bells in Turkey, would all be following orders from US Central Command and pulling out of Kirkuk.

"Everyone is pulling out. A few peshmergas (Kurdish fighters) will remain to help the Americans," he added.

US forces in the major oil city, he said, were "more than sufficient" to assure its security, although there were few signs of their presence.

Kurdish fighters were certainly less visible in the city Saturday, in contrast to the previous 48 hours when they poured in to Kirkuk to celebrate the capture of the ethnic Kurd-majority city they view as their historic capital and which had remained under Baghdad's control when the autonomous Kurdish zone emerged in 1991.

Turkey, which has a sizeable and restive Kurdish minority, has repeatedly threatened to intervene militarily in northern Iraq if Kurdish forces seized Kirkuk and nearby Mosul, which control access to major oilfields in the area.

Kirkuk was seized by Kurdish fighters backed by US special forces almost unopposed on Thursday. Hundreds of Kurdish policemen later arrived to try to restore order when the situation began spinning out of control.

However the US troops supposed to replace the Kurdish fighters and fill the power vacuum had by Saturday yet to make their presence felt here. The arrival of US reinforcements had been slated for Friday, but Rostam could not say whether they had arrived.

Several witnesses spoke of reinforcements pouring in, and local PUK chief Omar Fatah said "several thousand" US troops had arrived -- a figure that was impossible to verify.

US troops set up checkpoints in Kirkuk overnight, but had disappeared by the morning, and Rostam acknowledged that he did not know exactly where they were.

Kirkuk's airport, where the US troops could be posted, was sealed off.

Despite the continuing uncertainty over who was in charge, Fatah said widespread looting in the city had calmed -- even though his office continued to be bombarded with complaints over stolen property, as well as the lack of water and electricity.

Around 100 youths armed with sticks and iron bars also appeared at the governors office, shouting "stop the thieves or will stop them ourselves".

Members of the city's ethnic Turkmen community, seen by many senior Iraqi Kurds as Ankara's fifth column in an area once part of the Ottoman Empire, also claimed they were being singled out by looters.

However senior officials here sought to calm rumours that a particular ethnic group was bearing the brunt of the lawlessness, hoping to calm northern Iraq's ethnic tensions.

Kirkuk was "ethnically cleansed" under the rule of Saddam Hussein, who expelled many of its original inhabitants and replaced them with Arabs.

With Kirkuk's fall, thousands of Kurdish exiles flooded back in, vowing to reclaim their confiscated property, by force if necessary, sparking fears among city's Arab and Turkmen residents.

SPACE.WIRE