Kurdish peshmerga forces on Thursday blocked roads from Iraqi Kurdistan to the country's second city Mosul in response to Iraqi troop movements, a senior Kurdish military official told AFP.

"The two main roads connecting Arbil and Dohuk to Mosul were cut off on Thursday with sand embankments as a precautionary measure after we detected an increase in deployments and movements of Iraqi forces near the front line with the peshmerga," he said.