Iraq Militants Advance Toward Bagdad After Seizing Cities, Kurds Take Kirkuk

[DonLever]

Iraqi Kurds seized control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk on Thursday, while surging Sunni Islamist rebels advanced toward Baghdad, as the central government’s army abandoned its posts in a rapid collapse that has lost it control of the north.

Peshmerga fighters, the security forces of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish north, swept into Kirkuk after the army abandoned its posts there, a peshmerga spokesman said. “The whole of Kirkuk has fallen into the hands of peshmerga,” said Jabbar Yawar. “No Iraqi army remains in Kirkuk now.”

Kurds have long dreamed of taking Kirkuk, a city with huge oil reserves just outside their autonomous region, which they regard as their historical capital. The swift move by their highly organized security forces demonstrates how this week’s sudden advance by fighters of the al-Qaeda offshoot Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has redrawn Iraq’s map.

Since Tuesday, black-clad ISIL fighters have seized Iraq’s second biggest city Mosul and Tikrit, hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, as well as other towns and cities north of Baghdad. They continued their lightning advance on Thursday, moving into towns just an hour’s drive from the capital.

The army of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad has essentially fled in the face of the onslaught, abandoning buildings and weapons to the fighters who aim to create a strict Sunni Caliphate on both sides of the Iraq-Syria frontier.

INSURGENCY: MILITANTS ADVANCE TOWARD CAPITAL

Security and police sources said militants now controlled parts of the small town of Udhaim, 90 kilometres north of Baghdad, after most of the army troops left their positions and withdrew toward the nearby town of Khalis.

“We are waiting for supporting troops and we are determined not to let them take control. We are afraid that terrorists are seeking to cut the main highway that links Baghdad to the north,” said a police officer in Udhaim.

“ ‘Our final destination will be Baghdad, the decisive battle will be there,’ that’s what their leader of the militants group kept repeating,” a tribal figure from the town of Alam, north of Tikrit, said.

Security was stepped up in Baghdad to prevent the Sunni militants from reaching the capital, which is itself divided into Sunni and Shi’ite neighborhoods and saw ferocious sectarian street fighting in 2006-2007 under U.S. occupation.

The stunning advance of ISIL, effectively seizing northern Iraq’s main population centers in a matter of days, is the biggest threat to Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011

[Special Ed]

Not surprising. The international community needs to step in. ISIS/ISIL is a group that needs to be eradicated. Also you can bet the Taliban are watching this closely. America would be wise to unleash a heavy handed response here as to send a message for Afghanistan.

[Brendan Gaunce]

WW III coming up

[Special Ed]

WW III coming up

People have been throwing that around for years. Not sure how you see that happening here.

[Neversummer]

Can someone school us about the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims and why the deep conflict?

[Blackberries]

Sad that so many people died in iraq during the american occupation for essentially nothing .

[Special Ed]

Sad that so many people died in iraq during the american occupation for essentially nothing .

You do realize that so many people in Iraq also died, for essentially nothing, before the American occupation right?

[TheRussianRocket.]

Lol, good job America (especially Bush since he started it)!

War on terror? Sent troops to Iraq and that's when all the terror began happening. Prior to the troops coming there almost zero terror in Iraq. Just a coincidence America landed and all of a sudden the terror rose exponentially it seems.

[hockeyfan87]

A big problem is that post 2003 invasion the former Iraqi armed forces were completely disbanded in a short sighted move by American civilian administrators. In practice this meant that thousands of soldiers, including former generals, were out of a job, not given a pension that they had earned under Saddam and had no where to go. Many of them ended up playing roles in the insurgencies that followed the post 2003 invasion and now some of them are active members of ISIS.

You have a small group of radical soldiers who believe in their cause on one side. On the other you have soldiers bought and trained by Americans who have no desire to fight and die for a government that they do not believe in. From the reports I have read under 1000 ISIS soldiers attacked Mosul while over 30,000 government soldiers fled, leaving behind weapons and logistical equipment originally provided to them by the Americans.

There is no denying that Saddam Hussein was a dictator who gassed tens of thousands of Kurds but he also brought stability to Iraq. Modern day Iraq should never have existed but it was politicians in London that ignored the Sunni/Shia equation. I think the best outcome that can come in the future is either another secular dictator somehow rises above all the others vying for power or the international community becomes involved and divides the country along ethnic and religious lines as it should have been done a long time ago.

[Special Ed]

Lol, good job America (especially Bush since he started it)!

War on terror? Sent troops to Iraq and that's when all the terror began happening. Prior to the troops coming there almost zero terror in Iraq. Just a coincidence America landed and all of a sudden the terror rose exponentially it seems.

Prior to troops coming almost zero terror in Iraq? Wow totally clueless. You need to brush up on history there.

[TheRussianRocket.]

Prior to troops coming almost zero terror in Iraq? Wow totally clueless. You need to brush up on history there.

Didn't mean it literally. Meant in comparison to before when the troops came...it's night and day. Totally flipped lol.

[Special Ed]

Didn't mean it literally. Meant in comparison to before when the troops came...it's night and day. Totally flipped lol.

Only because there wasn't so much media coverage before and now you hear about every little thing. Saddam killed and murdered thousands of people to keep the country 'stable'. Started a couple wars. Gassed the Kurds. It's really not much a better alternative for Iraq moving forward. But it seems an easy target for people pushing their anti-American agenda. The reality is as Iraq naturally transitioned even without the American invasion this was bound to happen. Just like Syria for example.

[Blackberries]

You do realize that so many people in Iraq also died, for essentially nothing, before the American occupation right?

If your talking about saddams persecution of the kurds..yes I realize that.

Im just saying this confirms what a stupid move it was for america to be there to begin with.

[Special Ed]

If your talking about saddams persecution of the kurds..yes I realize that.

Im just saying this confirms what a stupid move it was for america to be there to begin with.

Not just the Kurds. Saddam killed thousands more besides the gas attack. To me the American invasion could have been justified for many reasons - but they chose the wrong one. Anyway it doesn't matter if you're pro invasion or not, now it is what it is and these extremist groups need to be stopped.

[TheRussianRocket.]

Only because there wasn't so much media coverage before and now you hear about every little thing. Saddam killed and murdered thousands of people to keep the country 'stable'. Started a couple wars. Gassed the Kurds. It's really not much a better alternative for Iraq moving forward. But it seems an easy target for people pushing their anti-American agenda. The reality is as Iraq naturally transitioned even without the American invasion this was bound to happen. Just like Syria for example.

Well it's not a sheer coincidence the terrorism spiked tremendously when the troops landed. If you disagree with that than I don't know what else to say lol.

The U.S. war on terror has increased terrorism.

Here are the number of terror attacks in Iraq between 1979 and 2011 courtesy of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism Global Terrorism Database (part of a joint government-university program on terrorism, is hosted at the University of Maryland):

Al Qaeda wasnt even in Iraq until the U.S. invaded that country. And U.S. policy in Libya is partly responsible for sending an influx of Al Qaeda terrorists and heavy weapons into Iraq.

And now things are getting a whole lot worse

You may not have heard, but Al Qaeda allies took over the Iraqi city of Fallujah 6 months ago.

And today, Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Iraq captured Iraqs second-biggest city, the major oil center of Mosul.

(The jihadis call themselves The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The fact that the U.S. is backing Al Qaeda in Syria is probably a continuing factor).

To make matters worse, the army fled, so the militants seized huge caches of U.S. supplied weapons, including humvees:

McClatchy notes the extremists captured:

A civilian airport, a military airport, a military division headquarters, a border crossing with Syria, a weapons depot, government offices, banks and television stations.

Conflict Reporter tweets:

#UNBELIEVABLE FOOTAGE #ISIS conquers the Iraqi army headquarters in #Mosul, takes/destroys all #US #MRAP|s

They also captured one or more black hawk helicopters. As Conflict Reporter tweets:

#Mosul airport is normally crowded with #Blackhawk and #Kiowa helis. Lets see how many ended up in #ISIS hands

One person tweets:

Black Hawk, one of ghaneemas taken by #ISIS. #Mosul #Iraq

Moreover, there were:

Surreal scenes in #Mosul, #Iraq as US trained troops leave behind their uniforms and flee from #ISIS to #Kurdistan. pic.twitter.com/eUyL65lnWa

And mass chaos as civillians tried to flee. As the BBC reports:

About 150,000 people thought to have fled Iraq city of #Mosul after militants take control http://bbc.in/SurMVl pic.twitter.com/6MzMlp59me

"Mission Accomplished"?

[Warhippy]

Rather unbelievable.

This is just over or under 1000 armed militants with simple RPGS and assault rifles literally bulldozing everything in their path. They are chasing away everyone and everything in their path. By all indication they are not actually growing in size but have chased a small army of almost 6,000 well armed and American trained Iraqi military units from Mosul and Kirkuk re-arming and now driving APVs and the like

In all honesty this is about a thousand armed bandits taking over a country.....

What the ever loving hell.

Where is Saudi Arabia and the purported UAE nations who had agreed to help police and guard Iraq until they could stand on their own

[Special Ed]

@ Russ rocket, lol you can't be serious with that. If some biased article with a meaningless drummed up statistics chart that anyone could make nails down your views on the conflict then so be it. And I see the utterly useless photos added for extra effect. To me just amounts to spam. I have already said my piece here. Good luck to the people of Iraq.

[TheRussianRocket.]

@ Russ rocket, lol you can't be serious with that. If some biased article with a meaningless drummed up statistics chart that anyone could make nails down your views on the conflict then so be it. And I see the utterly useless photos added for extra effect. To me just amounts to spam. I have already said my piece here. Good luck to the people of Iraq.

Whaat, lol. Never knew the truth was considered a lie now. Oh well..

[Horny Manatee]

Then people say Vancouver isn't safe anymore because of a few targeted shootings.

[elvis15]

Whaat, lol. Never knew the truth was considered a lie now. Oh well..

Even if they are valid statistics, and I'd lean to they're relatively good data, what is considered a terror attack? Is it things like road side bombings, largely focused on American troops over the years and the newly trained forces, or does it also include the wrongful persecutions and executions of thousands of local inhabitants?

You might be arguing completely different things, and it's futile to try and ignore that a man the US had put into power hasn't done incredibly bad things (including invade Kuwait) and was opening himself up to being deposed by one of the superpowers. That the US has made mistakes is another story, and we can lump the resulting violence in as just more to add to the tally.