Kurdish-US forces 'seize strategic hill'

US special forces and Kurdish peshmerga fighters seized a strategic hilltop near the major Baghdad-held city of Mosul in northern Iraq early today, a senior Kurdish leader said.

The area called Maqloub, 10 miles north-east of Mosul and heavily defended by Iraqi forces, was a hub for air defences against Allied air strikes as well as a munitions centre, said Hoshyar Zebari, a leading member of the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party.