Insurgents close in on Baghdad

BAGHDAD/TIKRIT.— Militants pushed a week-long offensive that has overrun swathes of Iraq to within 60 kilometres of Baghdad yesterday, as the UN warned the country’s very existence was under threat.Washington meanwhile deployed some 275 military personnel to protect its embassy in Baghdad, the first time it has sent troops to Iraq since it withdrew its forces at the end of 2011 after a bloody and costly intervention launched in 2003.

It was also mulling air strikes against the militants, who are led by the powerful Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group, and, according to Baghdad, funded and supported by Saudi Arabia.

The insurgents since they launched their lightning assault on June 9 have captured Mosul, a city of two million people, and a vast amount of territory north of Baghdad.

The crisis has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and sparked fears that the violence could impact the country’s vast oil production, along with concerns that security forces won’t be able to halt the insurgents’ march on the capital.

Officials said yesterday that the fighters briefly held areas of Baquba, a short drive from Baghdad, and took control of most of Tal Afar, a Shiite-majority town in north Iraq that lies along a strategic corridor to Syria.

The overnight attack on Baquba, which was pushed back by security forces but left 44 prisoners dead at a police station, marked the closest that fighting has come to the capital as part of a lightning offensive in which jihadists have said they intend to march on Baghdad and the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala.

In Tal Afar, militants were controlling most of the town but pockets of resistance remained, and soldiers, policemen and armed residents held on to parts of its airport, according to Nineveh provincial council deputy chief Nureddin Qabalan.

The swift advance of the militants has sparked international alarm, with UN envoy to Baghdad Nickolay Mladenov warning that Iraq’s sovereignty was at stake.

“Right now, it’s life-threatening for Iraq but it poses a serious danger to the region,” Mladenov said.

“Iraq faces the biggest threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity in years,” he added.

The violence sweeping Iraq has also raised tension in the region, with Baghdad yesterday accusing Saudi Arabia of “siding with terrorism”. — AFP/Reuters.