Militants rampage in Iraq's Mosul

Al-Qaida splinter group routs forces, overruns much of city

A Kurdish policeman stands guard Tuesday in Irbil, Iraq, while refugees from Mosul head to the self-ruled northern Kurdish region. Islamic militants overran parts of Mosul, west of Irbil and 220 miles from Baghdad, driving security forces from their posts and seizing the provincial government headquarters, security bases and other key buildings.
A Kurdish policeman stands guard Tuesday in Irbil, Iraq, while refugees from Mosul head to the self-ruled northern Kurdish region. Islamic militants overran parts of Mosul, west of Irbil and 220 miles from Baghdad, driving security forces from their posts and seizing the provincial government headquarters, security bases and other key buildings.

BAGHDAD -- Islamic militants overran much of Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday, seizing the governor's headquarters and rampaging through police stations, military bases and the airport as security forces collapsed and abandoned their posts. Gunmen cruised through neighborhoods, waving black banners while residents fled.

The assault was the latest in a widening insurgency by a breakaway al-Qaida group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The group has been advancing in both Iraq and neighboring Syria, capturing territory in what appears to be a campaign to set up a militant enclave straddling the border.

Earlier this year, Islamic State took control of another Iraqi city, Fallujah, in the west of the country, and government forces have been unable to take it back. The far larger Mosul and the surrounding Ninevah province are part of a major export route for Iraqi oil and a gateway to Syria.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pressed the parliament to declare a state of emergency that would grant him greater power, saying the public and government must unite "to confront this vicious attack, which will spare no Iraqi." The parliament speaker called the rout a "disaster by any standard."

During the nearly nine-year American presence in the country, Mosul was a major stronghold for al-Qaida, and U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out repeated offensives there before the 2011 U.S. troop withdrawal, regaining a semblance of control but never routing the insurgents entirely.

But even when al-Qaida was strong in Mosul in the past, it never succeeded in driving government forces out. Insurgents and Iraqi troops have been fighting for days in the city, but Monday night and into early Tuesday, the security forces' hold appeared to collapse.

Insurgents overran the Ninevah provincial government building in the city Monday evening, and the governor fled the city. The fighters stormed police stations, bases and prisons, capturing weapons and freeing prisoners. Security forces abandoned many of their posts, and militants seized large caches of weapons.

They took control of the city's airport and captured helicopters there, as well as a military air base 40 miles south of the city, the parliament speaker said.

On Tuesday, the militants appeared to hold much of the eastern half of Mosul, which is bisected by the Tigris River. Mosul residents said fighters were raising the black banners that are the emblem of the Islamic State.

A government employee who lives about a mile from the provincial headquarters, said she left with her family Tuesday morning.

"The situation is chaotic inside the city, and there is nobody to help us," Umm Karam said "We are afraid. ... There is no police or army in Mosul."

The Islamic State has ramped up its insurgency the past two years, presenting itself as the Sunni community's champion against al-Maliki's Shiite-led government.

The Mosul crisis comes as al-Maliki is working to put together a new governing coalition after elections last month and is relying even more on Shiite parties. Sunnis and Kurds have grown increasingly disillusioned with al-Maliki, accusing him of dominating power.

The Islamic State earlier this year took over Fallujah and parts of the nearby city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. It also has been carrying out a campaign of bombings and other violence in Baghdad and other parts of the country.

The group was once al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, but under its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it has escalated its ambitions, sending fighters into Syria to join the rebellion against President Bashar Assad.

Its jihadists became notorious as some of the most ruthless fighters in the rebellion -- and other rebels turned against it, accusing it of trying to hijack the movement. Al-Qaida's central command, angered over its intervention in Syria, threw the group out of the terror network.

On Tuesday, an activist group said an offensive by the Islamic State against other Islamic rebel factions in eastern Syria has killed more than 634 people and uprooted at least 130,000 since April 30.

Once spread across much of northern Syria, the Islamic State withdrew many of its fighters to its stronghold in the northern city of Raqqa earlier this year after other rebel factions began an offensive against the group.

But it has since consolidated its hold on Raqqa and the surrounding province. Then in the first week of May, the group's fighters pushed onward to the neighboring province of Deir el-Zour, blasting their way through towns along the Euphrates River and closing in on the provincial capital, the city of Deir el-Zour.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting in Deir el-Zour has killed 39 civilians, 354 rebel fighters, including many from the al-Qaida affiliated Nusra Front, and 241 members of the Islamic State.

Information for this article was contributed by Ryan Lucas and Albert Aji of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/11/2014

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