CNN-Turk television showed footage of two Skyturk reporters, one of whom was injured but standing up while the other had lost two fingers.

"He may lose his hand," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told CNN-Turk. Erdogan said the pair would be repatriated.

Other journalists said militias loyal to Iraq's ousted leader had thrown up barricades in Mosul and fired at cars driven by a group of Turkish journalists, the Hurriyetim electronic news site reported.

Kurdish fighters were also wounded in street fighting, the report said.

"Between eight and 10 (Kurdish) bodies were lying outside the hospital which they apparently protected," said a Vatan reporter.

Radikal reporter Ahmet Sik said Kurdish fighters were in control of a number of key spots in Mosul, 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Baghdad.

Mosul is an Arab-majority enclave of 1.5 million inhabitants in the mostly Kurdish north and surrounded by oil fields.

Anti-Kurdish and anti-American sentiment is running high in the city, which is also strategically important because of its airport and an Iraqi missile-launching base.

SPACE.WIRE