Turkmens in Kirkuk Are Worried

Leading news agency The Associated Press (AP) announced, "Kurdish warriors entered the city of Kirkuk, which is in a strategic oil area." Reuters filed a report saying that a commander from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had confirmed this report. Agence France Presse (AFP), meanwhile, reported eyewitness accounts claiming that the city had been captured by the peshmerga without any clashes.

AP said that people jammed into trucks and cars on the streets of Kirkuk were demonstrating with PUK and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) flags. A U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP that U.S. Special Operations forces had tried to establish an American presence in the city "for the sake of the regional good."

Mam Rostam, a PUK force commander, in a statement to Reuters said that the city was under their control. Declaring that hundreds of peshmerga had flowed into Kirkuk, Reuters reported eyewitness accounts indicating that Iraqi soldiers in the city had either surrendered their weapons or had fled towards Tikrit in the south.