US-backed Kurdish forces have captured the northern Iraqi oil capital of Kirkuk, British and Turkish television reported Thursday, with the Turkish report adding that looting had broken out in the city.
"Kurdish fighters are firing into the air to celebrate their victory. Residents of Kirkuk have spilled into the streets in jubilation," a correspondent of the Turkish television channel NTV said in a live report from the city.
The report added that Iraqi forces had fled the city without fighting.
A Sky News television correspondent, reporting live from northern Iraq, said Kurdish forces had entered Kirkuk from the south and west.
Earlier, a senior Kurdish commander told AFP that Kurdish forces pushing towards Kirkuk had seized the towns of Makhmur and Altun Kubri, about 20km northeast of Kirkuk.
With central Baghdad under U.S. control, the focus of the US forces in Iraq shifted to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, where a major battle may be looming.
Already, allied warplanes have been bombing Tikrit, and U.S. and British ground forces have been moving steadily toward the city about 160 kilometers north of the capital.
U.S. Central Command said that coalition aircraft were conducting strikes against military targets in Tikrit, "shaping the battlefield" before American ground forces move into this city.
Specifically, aircraft were targeting the Republican Guard's Adnan division, U.S. military officials said. In nighttime raids this week, Navy warplanes bombed a Republican Guard barracks and garrison there, said Rear Adm. Barry Costello, commander of the USS Constellation.
"We certainly are focused on Tikrit," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, at a Central Command briefing in Qatar, "to prevent the regime from being able to use it as a place to command and control, to restore command and control, or to hide." (Albawaba.com)
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