ARBIL: Iraqi authorities have extended through February an international flight ban slapped on the autonomous Kurdish region in response to a controversial independence vote, an airport official said Thursday, reports AFP. Baghdad severed Iraqi Kurdistan's air links to the outside world in late September after it voted overwhelmingly for independence at a non-binding referendum rejected as illegal by the central government.

The flight ban was just part of a battery of punishment inflicted on the Kurds as Baghdad sought to nullify the poll, with federal forces also seizing disputed oil-rich regions in a major blow for their finances.

Talar Faiq Saleh, the director of the airport in Iraqi Kurdistan's capital Arbil, said the transport ministry in Baghdad had sent a message signalling that international flights were "banned until February 28".