Kurdish troops advance on Kirkuk

KIRKUK - Kurdistan's armed forces have taken control of new strategic areas around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, in the wake of continuing violence between the Iraqi Army and a combination of armed protestors and Sunni militias.

The troop movements represent an aggressive shift in the de facto line of control that divides territory administered by the federal government from that of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The increasingly militarized area around Kirkuk has been an epicenter of recent violence blighting several of Iraq's northern provinces, and the advance of Kurdish forces threatened to raise tensions further.