Thursday, June 12, 2014

Militants reportedly overrun Tikrit, as 500,000 flee Mosul...

As refugees stream out of Mosul after the Iraqi city was captured by forces of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, NPR's Deborah Amos passes along reports that Tikrit, the hometown of the late dictator Saddam Hussein, has also been overrun.

The Associated Press says "soldiers and security forces [in Tikrit have] abandoned their posts and yielded ground once controlled by U.S. forces."

According to AP:

"There were no reliable estimates of casualties or the number of insurgents involved, though several hundred gunmen were in Tikrit and more were fighting on the outskirts, said Mizhar Fleih, the deputy head of the municipal council of nearby Samarra."

The latest news comes amid reports that a half-million people have been streaming out of Mosul, which was seized by Islamist militants this week. ISIS militants took over much of the city after Iraqi security forces seemingly abandoned their posts.

In a statement on Wednesday, the U.N. Security Council called the moves by al-Qaida-affiliated militants in Iraq "an attempt to destabilize the country and region." Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Tony Blair besieged as Cameron says: End the excuses and print Iraq War report...
  2. The road from Abu Ghraib: a torture story without a hero or an ending...
  3. Fisk: The children of Fallujah - the hospital of horrors...
  4. Once an Arab model, Baghdad now world’s worst city...
  5. A stench surrounds the Iraq Inquiry: is there a conspiracy to protect Tony Blair?
  6. Pilger: The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq can't be 'countered' indefinitely...

No comments:

Post a Comment