The incident occurred late on Tuesday at a meeting of the Goran (Change in Kurdish) movement, which emerged in regional elections last year as a rival to the two main Kurdish parties, Talabani's PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), and the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party), of regional president Massud Barzani.

"We received three wounded, including one seriously" at 12:30 am on Wednesday (2130 GMT Tuesday), a doctor in Sulaimaniyah, 270 kilometres (170 miles) north of Baghdad, said on condition of anonymity.

The Goran party, which is seen as a significant threat to the PUK and KDP in Iraq's March 7 general election, blamed forces connected to Talabani for the incident at the meeting in Sulaimaniyah, a stronghold of Talabani supporters.

"A PUK militia disturbed a meeting of our electoral list before opening fire and wounding three people," said Shaho Saaed, vice president of the Goran bloc in the Kurdistan parliament, confirming the casualties were taken to hospital.

In response, a spokesman for Sulaimaniyah province's security committee, Zana Hama Saleh, said PUK forces had arrested 11 people at the meeting, some of whom had shot their weapons in the air, and that three people were wounded.

Iraq's Kurdish politicians, who are locked in dispute with the central government in Baghdad over territory and oil rights, will lack unity for the first time in an Iraqi general election due to the rise of the Goran opposition.

The split last year fractured an alliance that Kurdish parties had presented in all polls since the overthrow of dictator Saddam Hussein after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Goran came to prominence when it won a surprising 23.57 percent of the vote in northern Iraq's regional election in July, after a campaign focused on the alleged corruption and hegemony of the KDP and PUK.