Iraqi insurgents advance

Saddam’s hometown falls; 500,000 flee Mosul

An Iraqi woman and child arrive Wednesday at a refugee camp outside Irbil, about 200 miles north of Baghdad, after fleeing the fighting in Mosul. Officials said about 500,000 people had left the city.

An Iraqi woman and child arrive Wednesday at a refugee camp outside Irbil, about 200 miles north of Baghdad, after fleeing the fighting in Mosul. Officials said about 500,000 people had left the city.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

BAGHDAD -- Al-Qaida-inspired militants pushed deeper into Iraq's Sunni heartland Wednesday, swiftly conquering Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit as soldiers and security forces abandoned their posts and yielded ground once controlled by U.S. forces.

The advance into former insurgent strongholds that had largely been calm before the Americans withdrew in 2011 is spreading fear that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, struggling to hold on to power after indecisive elections, will be unable to stop the Islamic militants as they press closer to Baghdad.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militant group took control Tuesday of much of Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, sending an estimated 500,000 people fleeing from their homes. As would happen in Tikrit, the Sunni militants moved in after police and military forces retreated after brief clashes.

The group, which has seized wide swaths of territory, aims to create an Islamic state spanning both sides of the Iraq-Syria border.

The capture of Mosul -- along with the fall of Tikrit and the militants' earlier seizure of the western city of Fallujah -- have undone hard-fought gains against insurgents in the years after the 2003 invasion by U.S.-led forces.

The White House said the security situation has deteriorated over the past 24 hours and that the United States was "deeply concerned" about the Islamic State's continued aggression.

The militants gained entry to the Turkish Consulate in Mosul and held captive 48 people, including diplomats, police, consulate employees and three children, said an official in the office of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish officials believe that the captives are safe, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment to reporters.

Turkish officials did not make any public comment on the seizure, but the state-run Anadolu Agency reported that Erdogan convened an emergency Cabinet meeting. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned the abductions and the seizure of Iraqi territory by the militants, urging "the international community to unite in showing solidarity with Iraq as it confronts this serious security challenge.

"Terrorism must not be allowed to succeed in undoing the path towards democracy in Iraq," Ban said.

By late Wednesday, witnesses in Samarra, 70 miles north of Baghdad, were reporting that the militants were on the outskirts of the city. They said the militants demanded that forces loyal to the government leave the city, or a sacred Shiite shrine there would be destroyed.

Samarra is known for the shrine, the al-Askari Mosque, which was severely damaged in a 2006 bombing during the height of the U.S.-led occupation. That event touched off sectarian fighting between the country's Sunni Arab minority and its Shiite majority.

Members of Shiite militias were on high alert in Baghdad, and many were reported headed north to Samarra, even though the central government declared a 10 p.m. curfew in the capital and surrounding towns.

An influential Iraqi Shiite cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, called for the formation of a special force to defend religious sites in Iraq.

While the insurgents advanced southward, officials said Baghdad did not appear to be in imminent danger from a similar assault although Sunni insurgents have stepped up car bombings and suicide attacks in the capital in recent months.

So far, Islamic State fighters have stuck to the Sunni heartland and former Sunni insurgent strongholds where people are already alienated by the Shiite-led government over allegations of discrimination and mistreatment.

Mosul, the capital of Ninevah province, and the neighboring Sunni-dominated province of Anbar share a long and porous border with Syria, where the Islamic State is also active.

Al-Maliki said a "conspiracy" led to the security failure that allowed militants to capture Mosul, and warned that members of the security forces who fled rather than stand up to the militants should be punished.

He stopped short of assigning direct blame, however, choosing to focus instead on plans to fight back without giving specifics.

"We are working to solve the situation," al-Maliki said. "We are regrouping the armed forces that are in charge of clearing Ninevah from those terrorists."

Al-Maliki, whose Shiite-dominated political bloc came in first in April 30 parliamentary elections but failed to gain a majority, has been trying to build a governing coalition in the country. This week he pressed the parliament to declare a state of emergency over the Mosul attack -- a decision expected later this week.

Officials said Wednesday that the U.S. is preparing to send new aid to Iraq to help slow the militants, but the Obama administration offered only tepid support for the prime minister, and U.S. lawmakers openly questioned whether he should remain in power.

"He's obviously not been a good prime minister," said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"He has not done a good job of reaching out to the Sunni population, which has caused them to be more receptive to al-Qaida efforts."

State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said it's expected that the U.S. will give Iraq new assistance to combat the insurgents but declined to describe it. Beyond the missiles, tanks, fighter jets and ammunition that the U.S. has already either given or plans to send to Iraq, Baghdad has sought American surveillance drones to root out insurgents.

"The situation is certainly very grave on the ground," Psaki said Wednesday. She said the U.S. is encouraged by Baghdad's recent promise for a national unity effort, but "we agree that all Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Maliki, can do more to address unresolved issues there, to better meet the needs of the Iraqi people."

A senior U.S. official said the U.S. is considering whether to conduct drone missions for Iraq but that no decision had been made. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and requested anonymity.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest warned that the instability was rapidly becoming a humanitarian issue requiring a coordinated response by Iraq's leaders to halt the Islamic State's advance and wrest territory away from insurgents.

"We condemn ISIL's despicable attack on the Turkish Consulate in Mosul, and we call for the immediate release of Turkey's kidnapped diplomatic and security personnel," Earnest said, using the initials of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Earnest said the militant group poses a "different kind of threat" to American interests as opposed to core al-Qaida, which had repeatedly and publicly vowed to attack U.S. soil. Still, he said the U.S. was watching the threat from the Islamic State "very carefully" because the group has proved itself to be violent and willing to consider attacking U.S. interests and American allies.

Oil refinery not taken

Tikrit residents said the militant group overran several police stations in the Sunni-dominated city Wednesday.

Two Iraqi security officials confirmed that the city, 80 miles north of Baghdad and the capital of Salahuddin province, was under the Islamic State's control and that the provincial governor was missing.

The oil refinery in Beiji, between Mosul and Tikrit, remained in government control, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to reporters. There were clashes, and gunmen tried to take the town but were repelled in a rare success for Iraqi government forces protecting an important facility, the officials said.

In addition to being Saddam's hometown, Tikrit was a power base of his once-powerful Baath Party. The former dictator was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole in the area and he is buried south of town in a tomb draped with the Saddam-era Iraqi flag.

The International Organization for Migration estimates 500,000 people have fled the Mosul area, with some seeking safety in the Ninevah countryside or the nearby semiautonomous Kurdish region. Getting into the latter has grown trickier, however, because migrants without family members already in the enclave need permission from Kurdish authorities.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Mosul's fall must bring the country's leaders together to deal with the "serious, mortal threat" facing Iraq.

"We can push back on the terrorists ... and there would be a closer cooperation between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government to work together and try to flush out these foreign fighters," he said on the sidelines of a diplomatic meeting in Athens.

Mosul residents said gunmen went around knocking on doors there Wednesday, reassuring people they would not be harmed. The situation appeared calm but tense, they said.

Violence raged elsewhere in Iraq on Wednesday.

Police and hospital officials said a suicide bomber struck inside a tent where tribesmen were meeting to solve a dispute in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City neighborhood, killing 31 and wounding 46.

Car bombs in Shiite areas elsewhere claimed another 17 lives and maimed dozens of people, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Car bombs and suicide attackers are favorite tools of the Islamic State.

As the Sunni militants advanced on Tikrit on Wednesday, Iranian airlines canceled all flights between Tehran and Baghdad because of security concerns. Iran also has intensified security measures along its borders, its official IRNA news agency reported.

Shiite powerhouse Iran has strong ties with Iraq's government. Some 17,000 Iranian pilgrims are in Iraq at any given time, the news agency quoted Saeed Ohadi, the director of Iran's Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, as saying.

Information for this article was contributed by Sameer N. Yacoub, Adam Schreck, Elena Becatoros, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Desmond Butler, Josh Lederman, Lara Jakes and Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press and by Suadad al-Sahly, Alan Cowell, Rick Gladstone, Tim Arango, Sebnem Arsu and Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times.

A Section on 06/12/2014