Baghdad (Reuters) - Iraq’s central government forces launched an advance early on Monday into territory held by Kurds, seizing a swathe of countryside surrounding the oil city of Kirkuk in a bold military response to a Kurdish vote last month on independence.
The government said its troops had captured Kirkuk airport, advanced to the city’s gates and taken control of northern Iraq’s oil company from the security forces of the autonomous Kurdish region, known as Peshmerga.
Baghdad described the advance as largely unopposed, and called on the Peshmerga to cooperate in keeping the peace. But the Peshmerga said Baghdad would be made to pay “a heavy price” for triggering “war on the Kurdistan people”.
Washington called for calm on both sides, seeking to avert an all-out conflict between Baghdad and the Kurds that would open a whole new front in Iraq’s 14-year civil war and potentially draw in regional powers such as Turkey and Iran.
A resident inside Kirkuk said members of the ethnic Turkmen community in the city of 1 million people were celebrating, driving in convoys with Iraqi flags and firing shots in the air. Residents feared this could lead to clashes with Kurds.
The overnight advance was the most decisive step Baghdad has taken yet to crush the independence bid of the Kurds, who have governed an autonomous part of Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and voted on Sept. 25 to secede.
Kirkuk, one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse cities in Iraq, is located just outside the autonomous Kurdish zone. Kurds consider it the heart of their homeland and say it was cleansed of Kurds and settled with Arabs under Saddam to secure control of the oil that was the source of Iraq’s wealth.
Prime Minister Haidar Abadi ordered security forces “to impose security in Kirkuk in cooperation with the population of the city and the Peshmerga”.
“We call on the Peshmerga forces to serve under the federal authority as part of the Iraqi armed forces,” he said in a statement read out on state television.
State TV said Iraqi forces had also entered Tuz Khurmato, a flashpoint town where there had been clashes between Kurds and mainly Shi‘ite Muslims of Turkmen ethnicity.
The Kurdish regional government did not initially confirm the Iraqi advances, but Rudaw, a major Kurdish TV station, reported that Peshmerga had left positions south of Kirkuk.
The “government of Abadi bears the main responsibility for triggering war on the Kurdistan people, and will be made to pay a heavy price”, the Peshmerga command said in a statement, cited by Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani’s assistant Hemin Hawrami.
Washington works closely with both the federal forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga to fight against Islamic State.
“We call on all parties to immediately cease military action and restore calm while we continue to work with officials from the central and regional governments to reduce tensions and avoid and futher clashes,” the U.S. embassy said.
“ISIS remains the true enemy of Iraq, and we urge all parties to remain focused on finishing the liberation of their country from this menace.”
A statement by the US-led international military task force in Iraq described the clashes outside Kirkuk as a “misunderstanding”.
Bayan Sami Rahman, the Kurdish regional government’s representative in the United States, tweeted a plea for Washington to “use (its) leadership role to prevent war”.
The action in Iraq helped spur a jump in world oil prices on Monday.