An Airbus 319 left Arbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, with 120 passengers on board, in what was the first such flight since an embargo was imposed after former dictator Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

There will be four such flights each week, Joachim Steinbach, Lufthansa's vice president for sales and marketing in southeast Europe, Africa and the Middle East, told reporters at Arbil airport.

"We restarted flights today after 20 years and we will begin flights (from Germany) to Baghdad by the end of the summer," he said.