Suspected al Qaeda-linked militants seize control of Iraq’s Mosul
Jihadist militants overran Iraq's second city of Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh on Tuesday, in a major blow to a government apparently incapable of stopping militant advances in the region.
The Islamists seized the provincial government headquarters and the Nineveh Operations Command as well as the airport, an army general told AFP.
They also freed hundreds of prisoners after launching assaults on three jails.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki responded by asking parliament to declare a state of emergency and announcing that the government would arm citizens to help fight the militants.
Maliki said in televised remarks that the cabinet had "created a special crisis cell to follow up on the process of volunteering and equipping and arming" the citizenry.
"All of Nineveh province fell into the hands of militants," parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi told journalists in Baghdad, adding the gunmen were heading south towards neighbouring Salaheddin province.
Mosul is the second city to fall from government control this year. Islamist fighters took control of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, in January.
Soldiers and police flee
Soldiers and police stripped off their uniforms so as not to be recognised and fled in the face of the Islamist onslought.
"The army forces threw away their weapons and changed their clothes and left their vehicles and left the city," said Mahmud Nuri, a displaced Mosul resident.
"We didn't see anyone fire a shot," he told AFP.
The advancing militants used loudspeakers to declare that they had "come to liberate" the city of some two million people.
The fighting in Mosul has already forced more than 4,800 families from their homes to other parts of the province and beyond, the deputy migration and displacement minister said. Many have fled to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.
Dozens of cars and trucks stretched out from one checkpoint on the boundary of the region, as people with plastic bags, suitcases and a pram waited to enter, some with young children in tow.
The militants are believed to be affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda offshoot that is also active across the border in neighbouring Syria.
The most powerful militant group in Iraq, ISIL is also a key force in the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria. In April it launched a campaign in Syria's Deir Ezzor province, which borders Nineveh, aimed at carving out an Islamic state.
(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)
