A day after taking control in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, militants Wednesday seized the Turkish consulate and arrested its consul and diplomatic staff in the northern Iraqi city, an official Kurdish website said.

Militants of Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) took control of the consulate and held captive the consul and a number of consulate staff and guards, Xinhua quoted the official website of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a major Kurdish party headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The website did not give further details about the incident.

On Tuesday, Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, came under control of militant groups, including ISIL, after several bloody clashes that erupted with Iraqi security forces last week.

Nineveh is a Sunni-majority province and its capital Mosul has long been a stronghold for insurgent groups since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.