Kirkuk, Iraq - A group of armed men abducted a senior judge from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Wednesday, police said.

Fayadh Yassin Badrani, a senior justice at Kirkuk's top court, was surrounded by five gunmen as he left his home in the al-Khadra district of the city, Colonel Mohammed Rashid Ghazi of the Kirkuk police told the German Press Agency dpa.

Ghazi said the police and the army were combing the area looking for the judge and his abductors. It was unclear whether the the abductors had political motives or were simply seeking ransom.

Kirkuk, with its rich oil reserves, is among the most ethnically diverse cities in Iraq, but is primarily divided between Kurds, many of whom hope to make the city the capital of am independent Kurdish state, and Sunni Arabs, many of whom moved to the city as part of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's attempts to "Arabize" the city.

The city is at the centre of related, simmering disputes between Baghdad and the government of the quasi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq over the division of the revenue from the reserves near the city, and over the conduct of parliamentary elections tentatively scheduled to take place at the end of the year.

The issues proved too thorny to resolve ahead of January's provincial council elections, and the city and the surrounding al-Tamim province did not participate in the polls. (dpa)