Al Quaeda splinter group sweeping through Iraq

This merits its own thread, as it looks as if a humanitarian disaster, and collapse of the Iraqi government, is unfolding.

http://news.sky.com/story/1279325/iraq-city-mosul-seized-by-al-qaeda-splinter-group

Iraq City Mosul Seized By Al Qaeda Splinter Group
The PM promises to arm civilians after security forces abandon their posts, but thousands of families are leaving the city.

A state of emergency has been declared in Iraq after militants effectively seized control of the country's second city.

Security forces abandoned their posts in Mosul after fighters, armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, overran government and military buildings.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has said the government would arm citizens to fight the militants, who are believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

An army colonel in the local military command said: "We have lost Mosul... Army and police forces left their positions and ISIL terrorists are in full control. It's a total collapse for the security forces."

Thousands of families have fled to the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq's north. Cars and trucks were seen queuing at a checkpoint on the boundary to the region.

Police were discarding uniforms and weapons and fleeing the city of two million people, where the ISIL black flag was flying over government buildings.

"Mosul now is like hell. It's in flames and death is everywhere," said widow Amina Ibrahim, who was leaving with her children.

Sky News Arabia sources say around 1,400 prisoners have been released after gunmen torched several police stations in Mosul, which is a former al Qaeda stronghold.

Residents told the Associated Press detainees set free were seen roaming the streets in yellow jumpsuits.

The capture of Mosul followed four days of heavy fighting in the city and the surrounding Nineveh province.

Militant fighters are now moving south towards neighbouring Salaheedin province, according to Iraqi parliament speaker Osama al Nujaifi.



Iraqis fleeing Nineveh province wait in their vehicles at a checkpoint

The US State Department pledged to help Iraq leaders "push back against this aggression", saying the militants pose a threat to the entire region.

UK's Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Hugh Robertson said: "I utterly condemn the attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) in Mosul in Iraq this morning."

The fall of Mosul deals a serious blow to the Iraq government's efforts to fight militants who have regained ground in Iraq over the past year.

ISIL insurgents and their allies currently have control of Fallujah and other parts of Anbar province.

ISIL was known as al Qaeda in Iraq until ties between the two organisations were cut earlier in 2014 following a power struggle.


'Push back'? Get out of the way ASAP, more like.

More up to date:

http://rt.com/news/165044-militants-seize-mosul-iraq/

State of emergency: ISIS militants overrun Iraq city of 1.8mn, free 2,500 prisoners

Including this pic:



Mehmet Ali Tuğtan @MehmetAliTugtan
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“@ShamiWitness: Crazy amount of heavy weaponry captured in Ninawa pic.twitter.com/chuic1FkGW #Iraq #ISIS” #ir306worldpolitics

If that's a sample of the weaponry that's fallen into the hands of Al Quaeda and its newly-expanded army, then IMO the situation is already out of control.

Are any of Saddam's relatives still alive? This might be a good time to put one of them in charge with full permission to shoot anyone and anything waving a black flag and shouting Allah Akhbar!

Push Back.

Signed Clueless in D.C.

Push back? Against that lot advancing on you? After you, Mr Kerry.

Fox version:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/06/10/iraqi-official-militants-seize-provincial-government-headquarters-in-northern/?intcmp=latestnews

Insurgents overran the Ninevah provincial government building in the city -- a key symbol of state control -- in the evening, and the governor fled the city. The fighters stormed police stations, bases and prisons, capturing weapons and freeing prisoners. Security forces melted away, abandoning many of their posts, and militant seized large caches of weapons.

They took control of the city's airport and captured helicopters there, as well as a military airbase 40 miles south of the city, the parliament speaker said.

On Tuesday, the militants appeared to hold much of the eastern half of Mosul, which is bisected by the Tigris River. Mosul residents said fighters were raising the black banners that are the emblem of the Islamic State.

Online footage taken from a car driving through the streets of Mosul showed burning vehicles in the streets, black-masked gunmen in pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, and residents walking with suitcases -- apparently fleeing. The video appeared authentic and matched AP reporting of the events.

I don't even want to think about what AQ is liable to do with heavy weapons and a rudimentary airforce - if everything is collapsing, Iraqi servicemen will go over to their side just to stay alive. And it's not as if life in the new, improved, 'democratic' Iraq is particularly wonderful, or worth defending.

The whole region is losing it..........So sad.   

Picking through various reports, it seems AQ may have given up in Syria, as Assad managed to hang on, so have moved onto a softer target.

And I don't know what there is to be done about it, beyond pull back to a safe, defendable area - but that leaves potentially millions of civilians in danger.

I know. I think that the whole region will be experiencing more in the near future......

You can bet your bottom dollar that Bagdad and other cities will be full of their supporters, beneath the radar, just waiting for the word to join in with the uprising.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/thousands-iraqis-flee-after-mosul-seized-201461023449883723.html

Iraqis flee Mosul after fighters seize city
Al-Qaeda splinter group ISIL overruns country's second biggest city, prompting PM to declare national emergency.

ens of thousands of people have fled Iraq's second biggest city Mosul after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al-Qaeda splinter group, took control of the city.

An estimated 1,300 ISIL fighters overran Iraqi security forces and seized the city's airport early on Tuesday.

The group stormed government buildings, TV stations, banks and freed an estimated 2,400 prisoners from jails in the northern Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital.

Mosul, which has a population of almost two million, is also the main export route for Iraq's oil.

But don't worry, Psaki has a tight grip on the situation:

"ISIL is not only a threat to the stability of Iraq, but a threat to the entire region," Jen Psaki, US State Department spokeswoman, said, adding that the US backed "a strong coordinated response".

And what would that be, pray tell? There are now estimated to be 50,000 and rising AQ affiliates in the area.

Meanwhile:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/power-line-assault-plunge-yemen-into-darkness-201461164559672523.html

Yemen remains in a state of total darkness a day after a series of attacks on power lines left the country without electricity.

The country's energy ministry reported power lines linking the capital, Sanaa, with the al-Qaeda stronghold of Marib were attacked on Tuesday, leaving the entire nation of 23 million people without power.

Just what does Obama think he's going to do if the whole lot of the AQ franchise launch guerilla attacks throughout Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent at once?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/10/white-house-state-department-condem-escalating-violence-in-iraq/?intcmp=latestnews


The tone at the State Department shifted considerably from a day earlier, when spokeswoman Marie Harf downplayed the situation. “I don’t get the sense that they’re gaining a lot of territory,” Harf said Monday at a press briefing.

And what, pray tell, is the point of NSA spying on everyone on the face of this earth when the US government doesn't even know that thousands of ISIL fighters are about to sweep the government of Iraq aside?

Never mind, I am sure ISIL is grateful to the US taxpayer for supplying them, oops, I mean the 'nice Syrian rebels' with all those modern weapons.

Last night militants advanced into the oil refinery town of Baiji, setting the court house and police station on fire.
They said around 250 guards at the refinery had agreed to withdraw to another town after the militants sent a delegation of local tribal chiefs to persuade them to pull out.
Baiji resident Jasim al-Qaisi, said the militants also warned local police and soldiers not to challenge them.
'Yesterday at sunset some gunmen contacted the most prominent tribal sheikhs in Baiji via cellphone and told them: '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 withdraw before (Tuesday) evening prayer'.'
Militants entered Baiji late on Tuesday evening in around 60 vehicles, releasing prisoners in the town.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2654861/Escape-Mosul-150-000-Iraqis-overnight-refugees-flee-terror-al-Qaeda-splinter-group-taken-countrys-second-biggest-city.html#ixzz34KQbknZT
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That's a novel way to wage war - just phone the enemy up and tell them to surrender.

The Mail article isn't too bad, for once.

Mail map gives some idea of the scale of the disaster overwhelming the Iraq government:

Good article. Please look at the cartoon!




The black flag of Al Qaeda flies over the streets of Mosul. Keep that in mind when President Obama takes credit for ending the war in Iraq while vowing to bring the one in Afghanistan to a similar end.

Four thousand four hundred eighty-six American service members made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, so it is galling that the Al Quaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has taken control of Mosul and Fallujah — two of the cities where American forces fought fiercely.
There was no one to stop them. In 2011, after failing to secure an agreement with the Iraqi government to keep a residual military presence there, Obama misguidedly withdrew entirely.

That left Iraqi security forces on the front lines. As the jihadists moved in, the troops fled, abandoning American-made heavy weaponry, along with nearly a half-billion dollars worth of currency left in the banks. Imagine the terror operations Al Qaeda could finance with that kind of cash.

As many as 150,000 Mosul residents have already fled the city of 1 million. They report that masked fighters and comrades freed from prisons were running through the streets.

STRINGER/IRAQ/REUTERS
Children take cover.

The killers appear to have come from over the border from Syria, where jihadists seized the lead in warring against dictator Bashar Assad. In Mosul, they post pictures of slain Iraqi soldiers in pools of blood. In Syrian towns they control, it is pictures of those they’ve publicly crucified.

That provides a cautionary tale as Obama heads for the Afghanistan exits as fast as he can.

The commander-in-chief says he intends to keep 9,600 troops there after the war formally ends at the close of this year. But again, he has yet to reach the agreement with the Afghan government needed for that to happen. And even if a deal is struck, it remains unclear what such a small force — and one on a fixed two-year departure schedule — could accomplish in a huge country where the Taliban holds much of both sides of the AfPak border.

If there’s a power vacuum, the bad actors will fill it — as they now have done in Mosul — and America’s investment of blood and treasure will have been squandered.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/dangerous-defeat-iraq-article-1.1824552#ixzz34Kjc7xHC

Good cartoon, except for one thing - these are the people Obama has been SUPPORTING in Syria....

abandoning American-made heavy weaponry, along with nearly a half-billion dollars worth of currency left in the banks. Imagine the terror operations Al Qaeda could finance with that kind of cash.


It's not the money that's so important - plenty of that in KSA. It's the heavy weaponry and rudimentary airforce.

Looks like there are now half a million refugees, with the total growing all the time:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/tens-thousands-flee-unrest-iraq-mosul-201461175824711415.html

Good was perhaps the wrong word......inappropriate might be better? We know whose side he is on.    

I feel heart sorry for all the displaced people.

I have knee jerk reactions to terror operations, we have been promised quite a few in this country over the years since 9/11. Can't think why.......

Whose side is he really on?

His actions indicate he is on the side of those wishing to re-establish a Caliphate in the Middle East.

Correct, Bonny. This morning I had the image of him bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia in my mind which let us know that he is Sunni Muslim himself.

Bet he wasn't chewing gum then.

Of course not. He showed them respect unlike our militaries who we are indebted to for delivering us from fascism etc. However it seems we are being taken back to it.........

I think Kerry and Obama should be first to volunteer to PERSONALLY fight that lot, as they seem to be doing a lot of shouting about other people taking them on.

Meanwhile, it's being reported that Tikrik has fallen; at this rate, ISIS, or ISIL or whatever, is going to be in Baghdad in a week. There are also rumours that the remnants of Saddam's Republic Guards are involved in this.

    

What do that pair know about combat anyway? Obama would arrive in a Prius.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/10/ex-us-ambassador-to-syria-calls-for-arming-syrian-opposition/

A strongly-worded op-ed by the United States' former ambassador to Syria calls for the U.S. to arm the war-torn nation's moderate opposition and warns that Al Qaeda-aligned forces in the region are on the rise.

“More hesitation and unwillingness to commit to enabling the moderate opposition fighters to fight more effectively both the jihadists and the regime simply hasten the day when American forces will have to intervene against Al Qaeda in Syria," Robert S. Ford, who served from 2010 to 2014, wrote in the New York Times.

Ford says he resigned in February because he "found it ever harder to justify our policy" as the situation in Syria deteriorated.

"Al Qaeda offshoots that joined the war now pose a potential threat to our security," Ford wrote. "These extremists enjoy a sanctuary from which they may mount attacks against Europe or the United States."

The op-ed comes as a major outbreak of violence and unrest in northern Iraq -- where Al Qaeda-aligned insurgents effectively toppled the country's second-largest city -- is fueling concerns in Washington that security in Iraq is rapidly deteriorating, a little more than two years after U.S. troops left the country.

Ford believes the U.S. needs to supply military hardware such as mortars and rockets to weaken the Syrian government's airfields, while also supplying cash for small salaries and supplies of food, medicine and ammunition.

"To be sure, there is no military solution, but it is possible to salvage something in Syria by preparing the conditions for a genuine negotiation toward a new government," Ford said.

===========================

Jesus H. Christ, what has to happen for the penny to drop? There AREN'T any 'nice rebels'; the US has been arming Al Quaeda all along.

And as the people of Syria have made it crystal clear that they want Assad in charge, then BUTT OUT before you do any more damage to the region.

That is not what 'they' want to hear. They don't care about people apart from themselves and their ilk.

Looks like Tikrit has indeed fallen:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/06/iraqi-city-tikrit-falls-isil-fighters-2014611135333576799.html

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, which was caputured 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, the capital of Salaheddin province.

Reports said Sammara and Kirkuk, which is home to Iraq's biggest oil refinery, were also being attacked by ISIL and its allies. Sources told Al Jazeera that the fighters had guaranteed the safety tol Iraqi soldiers if they gave up their weapons.