Iraq: An American-created disaster

11 years after Bush declared "mission accomplished'

What RT said on their latest broadcast, and BBC won't tell you, is that there have been mass beheadings.

No doubt there will be more as it comes to hand. Very little information as yet and it is the middle of the night in the Middle East.

Iraqi militants seize Tikrit after taking Mosul
Insurgents move toward the Iraqi capital

BBC,

11 June, 2014

Tikrit, the hometown of former leader Saddam Hussein, lies 150km (95 miles) north of the capital Baghdad.

Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki vowed to fight back against the jihadists and punish those in the security forces who fled offering little or no resistance.

The insurgents are from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).

ISIS, which is also known as ISIL, is an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

It controls considerable territory in eastern Syria and western and central Iraq, in a campaign to set up a Sunni militant enclave straddling the border.

There were also reports on Wednesday of fighting further south, in Samarra, 110km north of Baghdad.

Separately, at least 21 people were killed and 45 hurt by a suicide bomber at a Shia meeting in Baghdad, police said.

'Do not give in'

As many as 500,000 people fled Mosul after the militants attacked the city. The head of the Turkish mission in Mosul and almost 50 consulate staff are being held by the militants, Turkish officials say.

Turkey's foreign minister warned there would be "harsh retaliation" if any of its citizens were harmed.

Heavy fighting was reported in Tikrit as militants swept in

Militiamen consolidate their hold on Tikri

In a live TV address, he said a "conspiracy" had taken place in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province.

Mr Maliki said he did not want to apportion blame for who had ordered the security personnel "to retreat and cause chaos".

He added: "Those who deserted and did not carry out their jobs properly should be punished."

Mr Maliki told the people of Nineveh: "Do not give in. We are with you, the state is with you, the army is with you. Even if the battle is a long one, we will not let you down."

Charities have expressed fears for the tens of thousands fleeing the advance

A suicide attack on a Shia gathering in Baghdad left dozens dead and injured

He pledged to "reorganise the armed forces to cleanse Nineveh of the terrorists".

The BBC's Jim Muir says people in Mosul are reporting that militants there have been travelling around the city telling them they are not in danger - even the Shia residents - and that people should go back to work.

ISIS has been informally controlling much of Nineveh for months, and in the past week has attacked other areas of western and northern Iraq, killing scores of people.

The US has condemned the militants, but BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Adams says the West's response is not going to be military, as there is no appetite to return to a battleground that claimed thousands of British and American lives.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said there was "no question" of British troops returning to Iraq, five years after they ended combat operations there.

He said that the Iraqi government had "considerable resources" and it was up to its armed forces to respond.

The Iraqi government is struggling with a surge in sectarian violence that killed almost 800 people, including 603 civilians, in May alone, according to the UN. Last year, more than 8,860 people died.

This was a pretty good report from Radio New Zealand

From al-Jazeera (remember their clear biases)

Iraq city of Tikrit falls to ISIL fighters

Gunmen from the Islamic State of Iraq take city and launch attacks on Kirkuk and Samarra, a day after the fall of Mosul

al- Jazeera,

11 June, 2014

The Iraqi city of Tikrit has been seized by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, security sources have said, the second city to fall to the group in two days.

Sources told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that gunmen had set up checkpoints around Tikrit, which lies between the capital Baghdad and Mosul, Iraq's second largest city which was captured by ISIL on Tuesday.

"All of Tikrit is in the hands of the militants," a police colonel told the AFP news agency. A police brigadier general told AFP that fighters attacked from the north, west and south of the city, and that they were from ISIL.

A police major told the agency that the militants had freed about 300 inmates from a prison in the city, which is the capital of Salaheddin province.

Iraqi state television reported that special forces soldiers were fighting to regain control of city. Sources claimed the Iraqi soldiers had cleared the city of ISIL, but these reports remain unverified.

Meanwhile, sources said the nearby city of Kirkuk, home to Iraq's biggest oil refinery, was also being attacked by ISIL. Fighters had guaranteed the safety of Iraqi soldiers if they gave up their weapons.

In Samarra, south of Tikrit, witnesses told AFP that fighters had arrived in trucks mounted with machineguns, while a policeman said his unit was involved in fighting at the northwest entrance the city.

The fighting comes after half a million people are reported to have fled Mosul since the city was taken over by ISIL on Tuesday.

The Geneva-based International Organisation for Migration said the Mosul takeover had "displaced over 500,000 people in and around the city", a quarter of the city's population.

The Turkish government also said that ISIL had stormed its consulate in Mosul, taking staff and the consul captive.

The ISIL, which also controls large areas of northern Syria, on Wednesday bulldozed a berm marking the border between Iraq's Nineveh province and Syria, saying it was "smashing the Sykes-Picot border".

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad on Wednesday, said aid agencies were under pressure to deliver humanitarian aid as nobody had expected Mosul to fall quite so dramatically.

Earlier in the day, ISIL advanced into the oil-refinery town of Baiji before Iraq's Fourth Armoured Divison forced the group to retreat.

The group had threatened local police and soldiers not to challenge them and warned the town's most prominent tribal leaders to lay down their weapons.

"We are coming to die or control Baiji, so we advise you to ask your sons in the police and army to lay down their weapons."

And in Sadr City, northern Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated explosives inside a tent where local Shia leaders were meeting, killing at least 15 people and wounding at least 34 others.