Kurdish forces have lost more territory in Iraq , withdrawing from the town of Sinjar a day after Iraqi forces pushed them out of the disputed city of Kirkuk.
It's the second hasty withdrawal for the Kurdish forces, known as the peshmerga, from territory they contest along with Iraq's central government and following the Iraqi Kurdish independence referendum last month.
The vote was rejected by the central government in Baghdad, as well as Turkey, Iran and the US.
The Iraqi forces' retaking of Kirkuk came only two weeks after they had fought together with the peshmerga to neutralise the Islamic State group in Iraq, their common enemy.
When Iraq's armed forces crumbled in the face of an advance by Islamic State group in 2014, peshmerga forces moved into Kirkuk to secure the city and its surrounding oil wells though it was 32 kilometres outside the Kurds' autonomous region in northeast Iraq.
Baghdad has since insisted Kirkuk and its province be returned to the central government, but matters came to a head when the Kurdish authorities expanded their referendum last month to include Kirkuk.
