Iraqis urged to face down Sunni menace

Obama: No ground troops

BAGHDAD -- Iraq's Shiite clerical leadership Friday called on all Iraqis to defend their country from Sunni militants who have seized large areas of territory, and a United Nations official expressed "extreme alarm" at reprisal killings in the offensive, citing reports of hundreds of dead and wounded.

President Barack Obama said he is weighing options for countering the insurgency, but warned Iraqi leaders that he would not take military action unless they moved to address the country's political divisions.

Fighters from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant made fresh gains, driving government forces at least temporarily from two towns in an ethnically mixed province northeast of Baghdad. The assault threatens to embroil Iraq more deeply in a wider regional conflict feeding off the chaos caused by the civil war in neighboring Syria.

The fast-moving rebellion, which also has drawn support from former Saddam Hussein-era figures and other disaffected Sunnis, has emerged as the biggest threat to Iraq's stability since the U.S. withdrawal in 2011. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose Shiite-led government is struggling to form a coherent response to the crisis, traveled to the city of Samarra to meet with military commanders late Friday.

Militants earlier in the week overran military bases and several communities including the second-largest city of Mosul and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit. Samarra, the site of a prominent Shiite shrine 60 miles north of Baghdad, sits between Tikrit and the capital.

A representative for Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite spiritual leader in Iraq, told worshippers at Friday prayers that it was their civic duty to confront the Sunni threat.

"Citizens who can carry weapons and fight the terrorists in defense of their country, its people and its holy sites should volunteer and join the security forces," said Sheik Abdul-Mahdi al-Karbalaie.

He warned that Iraq faced "great danger," and said fighting the militants "is everybody's responsibility, and is not limited to one specific sect or group."

Volunteers began to appear at the southern gate to Baghdad, which leads to the predominantly Shiite south of the country, within an hour after al-Karbalaie broadcast al-Sistani's call.

At the police post there, by the soaring arches that mark the city limits, a pickup driven by elders pulled up with six young men in the back.

"We heard Ali Sistani's call for jihad, so we're coming here to fight the terrorism everywhere, not just in Iraq," said Ali Mohsin Alwan al-Amiri, one of the elders.

On Thursday night, Sunni militants driving machine gun-mounted pickups entered the two newly conquered Iraqi towns in Diyala province -- Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad, and Sadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital. Iraqi soldiers abandoned their posts there without any resistance, police said.

Jalula residents said the gunmen issued an ultimatum to the soldiers not to resist and to give up their weapons in exchange for safe passage. After seizing the town, the gunmen announced on loudspeakers that they were there to rescue residents from injustice and that none would be hurt.

Security officials in Baghdad said government troops, backed by Kurdish forces, counterattacked several hours later and forced the insurgents to withdraw.

However, the Kurdish security forces, known as peshmerga, then raised the Kurdish flag over government buildings and transferred abandoned Iraqi military equipment back to the Kurds' self-ruled northern region, two police officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to journalists, and the residents declined to give their names out of fears for their safety.

The Kurds control a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq and have long sought independence.

'murder of all kinds'

In Geneva, U.N. human-rights chief Navi Pillay warned of "murder of all kinds" and other war crimes in Iraq, and said the number killed in recent days may run into the hundreds, while the wounded could approach 1,000.

Pillay said her office has received reports that militants rounded up and killed Iraqi army soldiers as well as 17 civilians in a single street in Mosul.

Her office heard of "summary executions and extrajudicial killings" as Islamic State militants overran Iraqi cities and towns this week, the statement said.

"I am extremely concerned about the acute vulnerability of civilians caught in the cross-fire, or targeted in direct attacks by armed groups, or trapped in areas under the control of ISIL and their allies," Pillay said. "And I am especially concerned about the risk to vulnerable groups, minorities, women and children."

The U.N. refugee agency reported that authorities said 300,000 people fleeing from Mosul had sought safety in the Erbil and Duhok governorates in the Kurdistan region. Agency monitoring teams reported that many arrived with little more than what they were wearing, although some were staying with relatives and in hotels, the agency said.

Meanwhile, the U.N. envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, urged the country's Federal Court to certify the results of April parliamentary elections before the current parliament's mandate expires today. Al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated political bloc came in first in the elections but failed to get a majority, forcing him to try to build a governing coalition.

"There is a need to guarantee the continuity of the parliament, representing all Iraqis, is in place and will continue to address urgent decisions of national importance," Mladenov said.

The Islamic State has vowed to march on Baghdad, but so far the militants have stuck to the Sunni heartland and former Sunni insurgent strongholds where people are alienated by al-Maliki's government over allegations of discrimination and mistreatment.

U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Baghdad is unlikely to fall, according to officials who were briefed on the matter but could not be quoted by name because the briefings were classified.

Iraq's Shiite soldiers who deserted en masse because they were unwilling to fight and die for Sunni towns such as Tikrit are much more likely to fight for Baghdad and its Shiite-dominated national government, U.S. intelligence officials believe. U.S. agencies also think the units around Baghdad are marginally better.

In addition, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shiite militia have vowed to defend Shiite holy sites from the Sunni militants. Still, authorities have tightened security around the capital, and residents stocked up on supplies.

Elsewhere, Iraq's former Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, said from Istanbul that while the Islamic State was one player in the uprising, it is not the driving force.

"They are not involved in the decision-making," he said, adding that the Sunni tribes in Mosul and Anbar are "behind this Iraqi spring."

Baghdad considers al-Hashemi a fugitive after he was found guilty in absentia in terrorism-related cases -- charges he dismisses as politically motivated.

Obama acknowledges 'danger'

In the U.S., Obama said Friday that he would make a decision "in the days ahead" about whether to use military power to help the Iraqi government stave off collapse at the hands of the insurgents, but he ruled out using ground forces.

"This poses a danger to Iraq and its people and, given the nature of these terrorists, it could pose a threat eventually to American interests as well," Obama said of the offensive now threatening Baghdad. "We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options."

The president cautioned against expecting quick action, saying the planning would take "several days" to make sure any action was effective.

"People should not anticipate that this is something that is going to happen overnight," he said. "We want to make sure that we have good eyes on the situation there. We want to make sure that we've gathered all the intelligence that's necessary so that if in fact I do direct and order any actions there, that they're targeted, they're precise and they're going to have an effect.

Administration officials said the options on the table include strikes using drones or manned aircraft, as well as boosts in surveillance and intelligence gathering, including satellite coverage and other monitoring efforts.

The U.S. also is likely to increase aid to Iraq, including funding, training and both lethal and nonlethal equipment, the officials said.

But Obama said he was making any military action contingent on a "serious and sincere effort by Iraq's leaders to set aside sectarian differences" between the nation's Sunnis and Shiites.

"We can't do it for them," he said. "And in the absence of this type of political effort, short-term military action, including any assistance we might provide, won't succeed."

Al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have pleaded with Washington for more than a year for additional help to combat the growing insurgency.

In recent days, Obama has been criticized by Republican lawmakers, who accused him of neglecting the burgeoning political crisis and said he should have worked harder to persuade Iraq to let him leave a residual force in Iraq after the U.S. pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.

Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon of California, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, continued that criticism Friday, saying the president should be thinking about a more extensive response than a momentary airstrike.

"The White House has a history of 'considering all options' while choosing none," McKeon said in a written statement. "There are no quick-fix solutions to this crisis, and I will not support a one-shot strike that looks good for the cameras but has no enduring effect."

Meanwhile, Shiite powerhouse Iran on Friday signaled its willingness to confront the growing threat from the militant blitz in neighboring Iraq.

Former members of Tehran's powerful Revolutionary Guard announced their readiness to fight in Iraq against the Islamic State, the official IRNA news agency reported. Iranian state TV quoted President Hassan Rouhani as saying his country will do all it can to battle terrorism next door.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will apply all its efforts on the international and regional levels to confront terrorism," the report said Rouhani told al-Maliki by phone.

Iranian officials denied their forces were actively operating in Iraq, however.

Mansour Haghighatpour, who sits on an influential Iranian parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, said Baghdad is capable of fighting the militants, but Tehran would consider other options if asked.

Iran has built close political and economic ties with postwar Iraq, and many influential Iraqi Shiites have spent time in the Islamic Republic. Iran this week halted flights to Baghdad because of security concerns and said it was intensifying security on its borders.

Even with their shared interests in a stable Iraq, there was no sign of cooperation or communication between Washington and Tehran on the crisis. Marie Harf, deputy State Department spokesman, said Friday that "we are not talking to the Iranians about Iraq."

Information for this article was contributed by Sameer N. Yacoub, Adam Schreck, Julie Pace, John Heilprin, Jon Gambrell, Edith Lederer, Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Desmond Butler, Nasser Karimi, Lolita C. Baldor, Ken Dilanian and Lara Jakes of The Associated Press and by Peter Baker, Alissa J. Rubin, Suadad al-Salhy, Alan Cowell, Rod Nordland and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times.

A Section on 06/14/2014

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