Iraqi forces are deploying tanks and artillery near a Kurdish-held area of northern Iraq where a section of a Kurdish oil export pipeline is located, as well as land crossings to Turkey and Syria, security sources said on Monday.

Iraqi forces on Friday took control of the last district in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk still in the hands of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters following a three-hour battle, security sources said.

Iraqi forces on Friday took control of the last district in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk still in the hands of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters following a three-hour battle, security sources said.

A senior Iranian military commander repeatedly warned Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq to withdraw from the oil city of Kirkuk or face an onslaught by Iraqi forces and allied Iranian-backed fighters, Kurdish officials briefed on the meetings said.

The U.S. State Department on Friday urged the Baghdad government to avoid clashes in northern Iraq by limiting the movement of federal troops in disputed areas to those coordinated with the Kurdistan Regional Government.

A Baghdad court issued an arrest warrant for the vice president of Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region on Thursday for saying that Iraqi forces had "occupied" the disputed province of Kirkuk this week.

The United States sought on Monday to avoid openly taking sides in an Iraqi-Kurdish dispute, as Iraq’s capture of the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk raised the risk of an open conflict between U.S. allies in the fight against Islamic State.

An Iraqi Yazidi group affiliated with a Shi‘ite-led armed faction took control on Tuesday of Sinjar, said residents of the northwestern city that is claimed by both Kurdish and central Iraqi authorities.

Goldman Sachs said that while oil output from the Kurdistan region was potentially at risk due to a standoff with Iraq, tensions between the United States and Iran remained a larger and longer term threat to global supply.

Iran on Sunday shut its border crossings with Iraq’s Kurdistan in support of measures taken by the Iraqi government to isolate the Kurdish region, the Iraqi foreign ministry said.

The Iraqi government said on Monday it would seek to impose control over Kurdistan-based mobile phone operators and move their headquarters to the capital

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Tuesday called for a "joint administration" of Kirkuk and other areas claimed by both his government and the autonomous Kurdish region, provided that Baghdad has ultimate authority in such an arrangement.

raq's autonomous Kurdistan region plans to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Nov. 1, the Erbil-based Rudaw TV said on Tuesday, as the Kurdish leadership cements its case for independence.

Iran deployed a dozen tanks supported by artillery at its border with Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Monday, a Kurdish official said, adding that the move was a dangerous escalation in the crisis triggered by Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence vote.

Iraq plans to take control of the borders of its autonomous Kurdistan region "in coordination" with Iran and Turkey, the Iraqi Defence Ministry said on Friday.

Iraq's top Shi‘ite cleric opposes the secession of the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, his representative said in a Friday sermon on his behalf, in the religious leader's first comments on the Kurds' decision to back independence in a referendum.

The United Nations has offered to help "solve the problem" between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) over a Kurdish independence referendum held on Monday, the Iraqi foreign ministry said on Thursday.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has offered to hold talks with Iraq's central government about hosting Iraqi observers at KRG airports to help defuse a crisis triggered by a Kurdish independence vote, Kurdish Rudaw TV said Wednesday.

Baghdad heaped pressure on Iraq's Kurds on Wednesday, demanding they cancel their overwhelming vote for independence while parliament urged the Iraqi central government to send troops to take control of vital oil fields held by Kurdish forces.

Authorities in Kirkuk declared a curfew an hour and a half before polls closed in a Kurdish independence referendum on Monday as jubilant Kurds celebrated a vote that has raised fears of a new outburst of ethnic conflict.