Asia

Home page

Asia

Iraq rebels take Saddam's home town in lightning advance

11 June 2014 22:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Sunni rebels from an al Qaeda splinter group overran the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday and closed in on the biggest oil refinery in the country, making further gains in their rapid military advance against the Shi'ite-led government, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The threat to the Baiji refinery comes after militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern city of Mosul, advancing their aim of creating Sunni Caliphate straddling the border between Iraq and Syria.

The fall of Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city, is a blow to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's attempts to defeat the Sunni militants, who have regained territory in Iraq over the past year following the withdrawal of U.S. forces, seizing Falluja and parts of Ramadi west of Baghdad at the start of the year.

An estimated 500,000 Iraqis have fled Mosul, home to 2 million people, and the surrounding province, many seeking safety in the autonomous Kurdistan region.

Security sources said ISIL militants on Wednesday drove more than 60 vehicles into Tikrit, the Sunni home town of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, occupying local government buildings and raising ISIL's black flag overhead.

"I was in a security station in Tikrit. There were three policemen with me and we were taken by surprise when militants started shooting machine guns and speaking on loudspeakers, telling us to leave," said police captain Saleh Al-Jubbouri.

"The three policemen changed their clothes and vanished."

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraq's leaders must unite to face a "mortal" threat. "There has to be a quick response to what has happened," he said during a trip to Greece.

Zebari said Baghdad would work with forces from Kurdistan in the north to drive the fighters out of Mosul after they put Iraqi security forces to flight on Tuesday.