BAGHDAD (AP) — Islamic militants who seized cities and
towns vowed Thursday to march on Baghdad to settle old scores, joined by
Saddam Hussein-era loyalists and other disaffected Sunnis capitalizing
on the government’s political paralysis over the biggest threat to
Iraq’s stability since the U.S. withdrawal.
Trumpeting their victory, the militants also declared they would impose Shariah law in Mosul and other
areas they have captured.
In
northern Iraq, Kurdish security forces moved to fill the power vacuum —
taking over an air base and other posts abandoned by the military in
the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. The move further raised concern the
country could end up partitioned into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones.
Three
planeloads of Americans were being evacuated from a major Iraqi air
base in Sunni territory north of Baghdad, U.S. officials said, and
Germany urged its citizens to immediately leave parts of Iraq, including
Baghdad.
President Barack Obama said Iraq will need more help
from the United States, but he did not specify what it would be willing
to provide. Senior U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to discuss the matter by name said
Washington is considering whether to conduct drone missions in Iraq.
The
U.N. Security Council met on the crisis, underscoring the growing
international alarm over the stunning advances by fighters from the
militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Russia’s
U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the council president, said the U.N.
envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, told members by videoconference that
"there is no immediate danger of the violence spreading to Baghdad" —
that the city "is well protected and the government is in control."
Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki had asked parliament to declare a state of
emergency that would give him and his Shiite-led government increased
powers to run the country, but the lawmakers failed to assemble a
quorum.
The Islamic State, whose Sunni fighters have captured
large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, aims to create an Islamic
emirate spanning both sides of the border. It has pushed deep into parts
of Iraq’s Sunni heartland once controlled by U.S. forces because police
and military forces melted away after relatively brief clashes,
including in Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul.
Skirmishes
continued in several areas. Two communities near Tikirt — the key oil
refining center of Beiji and the city of Samarra, home to a prominent
Shiite shrine — remained in government hands, according to Iraqi
intelligence officials. The price of oil jumped to above $106 a barrel
as the insurgency raised the risk of disruptions to supplies.
In
its statement, the Islamic State declared it would start implementing
its strict version of Shariah law in Mosul and other regions it had
overrun. It said women should stay in their homes for modesty reasons,
warned it would cut off the hands of thieves, and told residents to
attend daily prayers. It said Sunnis in the military and police should
abandon their posts and "repent" or else "face only death."
The
Islamic State’s spokesman vowed to take the fight into Baghdad. In a
sign of the group’s confidence, he even boasted that its fighters will
take the southern Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, which hold two of
the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims.
"We will march toward
Baghdad because we have an account to settle there," he said in an audio
recording posted on militant websites commonly used by the group. The
statement could not be independently verified.
Baghdad does not
appear to be in imminent danger of a similar assault, although Sunni
insurgents have stepped up car bombings and suicide attacks in the
capital recently.
While ISIL fighters gained the most attention in
this week’s swift advances, it was increasingly clear that other Sunnis
were joining the uprising.
Several militant groups posted photos
on social media purporting to show Iraqi military hardware captured by
their own fighters, suggesting a broader-based rebellion like that in
neighboring Syria.
In Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, overrun by
militants Wednesday, witnesses said fighters raised posters of the late
dictator and Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his former deputy who escaped the
2003 U.S.-led invasion and eluded security forces ever since.
Fighters
loyal to his Naqshabandi Army as well as former members of Saddam’s
Baath Party were the main militant force in Tikrit on Thursday, said a
resident who identified himself by his nickname, Abu Mohammed, out of
concern for his safety. He said about 300 soldiers surrendered near the
governor’s office — a spectacle captured in multiple amateur videos
posted online.
Lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili as well as two senior
intelligence officials, who were not authorized to talk to the press,
confirmed the involvement of al-Douri’s group and other former Baathists
and Saddam-era military commanders. That could escalate the militants’
campaign to establish an al-Qaida-like enclave into a wider Sunni
uprising and lead to breaking up the country along ethnic and sectarian
lines.
Feisal Istrabadi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the U.N.,
said the rapid fall of Mosul and Tikrit required trust from the local
population — something ISIL or al-Douri wouldn’t necessarily have on
their own.
"Ordinary citizens feel disenfranchised and have no
stake in the state anymore," he said. "This is an alliance of
convenience where multiple disaffected groups have come to defeat … a
common foe. "
With its large Shiite population, Baghdad would be a
far harder target for the militants. So far, they have stuck to the
Sunni heartland and former Sunni insurgent strongholds where people are
already alienated by al-Maliki’s government over allegations of
discrimination and mistreatment. The militants also would likely meet
far stronger resistance, not only from government forces but by Shiite
militias.
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq
Shiite militia vowed to defend Shiite holy sites, raising the specter of
street clashes and sectarian killings.
Baghdad authorities tightened security and residents stocked up on essentials.
"Everybody
I know is worried for the safety of his family as the militants are
advancing to Baghdad," said Hazim Hussein, a Shiite shopowner and father
of three.
Another Baghdad merchant, Mohammed Abdul-Rahim, a
Sunni, lamented that the "future of this country looks more dim than any
time in modern Iraqi history."
Hundreds of young men crowded in
front of the main army recruiting center in Baghdad on Thursday after
authorities urged Iraqis to help battle the insurgents.
Security
officials said the Islamic State fighters managed to take control of two
weapons depots holding 400,000 items, including AK-47 rifles, rockets
and rocket-propelled grenades, artillery shells and mortars. A quarter
of the stockpiles were
sent to Syria, they said.
The advances by
the Sunni militants are a heavy defeat for al-Maliki. His
Shiite-dominated political bloc came first in April parliamentary
elections — the first since the U.S. military withdrawal in 2011 — but
failed to gain a majority, forcing him to try to build a governing
coalition.
"We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists
are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that
matter," Obama said in Washington.
Al-Maliki and other Iraqi
leaders have pleaded with the Obama administration for more than a year
for additional help to combat the growing insurgency.
Britain and
France said it was up to Iraqi authorities to deal with terrorism and
worsening security, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said
the rapid advances by the militants proved the invasion of Iraq 11 years
ago had been a fiasco.
"What is happening in Iraq is an
illustration of the total failure of the adventure undertaken primarily
by the U.S. and Britain and which they have let slip completely out of
control," Lavrov was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying.
In
Shiite powerhouse Iran, President Hassan Rouhani blasted the Islamic
State as "barbaric." Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif offered
support in a phone call with his Iraqi counterpart, Iranian TV reported.
Iran has halted flights to Baghdad because of security concerns and has
intensified security on its borders.
The U.N. Security Council
urged a national dialogue including all political and religious groups
in Iraq but took no action after discussing the crisis and hearing a
closed briefing from Mladenov, the U.N. envoy.
Diplomatic efforts
were underway to free 80 Turkish citizens held by militants in Mosul, an
official in the Turkish prime minister’s office said. The captives
include 49 people seized in the Turkish consulate Wednesday, said an
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity
of the issue.
Kurdish fighters from the ethnic group’s autonomous
enclave in the north showed signs of taking a greater role in fighting
back against the ISIL. Their role is a potential point of friction
because both Sunni and Shiite Arabs are wary of Kurdish claims on
territory.
Kurdish security forces known as peshmerga took over an
air base and other posts abandoned by Iraqi forces in Kirkuk, Brig.
Halogard Hikmat, a senior peshmerga official told The Associated Press.
He denied reports the whole city was under peshmerga control.
___
Schreck
reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers
Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Paris, Aya Batrawy in Dubai, Desmond Butler in
Istanbul, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Edith M.
Lederer at the U.N. contributed to this report.