IRAQ: Iraqi military and police meet with burning vehicles along road southwest of Kirkuk as Sunni insurgents advance from Mosul

Record ID: 375749

  • Title: IRAQ: Iraqi military and police meet with burning vehicles along road southwest of Kirkuk as Sunni insurgents advance from Mosul
  • Date: 11th June 2014
  • Summary: AL-MULTAQA DISTRICT, HAWIJA DISTRICT, SOUTHWEST OF KIRKUK, IRAQ (JUNE 11, 2014) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PLUME OF SMOKE BILLOWING AS SEEN FROM MOVING VEHICLE VARIOUS OF POLICE VEHICLE ON ROAD SOLDIERS TAKING SHELTER BEHIND CONCRETE SLAB FIRING / SMOKE BILLOWING FROM BURNING VEHICLES / SOLDIER TAKING AIM ACROSS DESERT SOLDIER FIRING TOWARDS RISING PLUME OF SMO
  • Embargoed: 26th June 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Iraq
  • Country: Iraq
  • Topics: Conflict,Politics,Religion
  • Reuters ID: LVA8F3EGSRERWCCJXE08HAZQGIBC
  • Story Text: Kirkuk's police chief and security forces faced burning and abandoned vehicles as they patrolled the road near Hawija on Wednesday (June 11).
    Sunni insurgents from an al Qaeda splinter group advanced into an area further south that includes Iraq's biggest oil refinery on Wednesday after seizing the northern city of Mosul in a devastating show of strength against the Shi'ite-led government.
    Security sources said militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- Sunni militants waging sectarian war on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian frontier, drove into the town of Baiji late on Tuesday in armed vehicles, torching the court house and police station after freeing prisoners.
    A group of police, including Kirkuk's police chief Sarhad Wader, fired shots while plumes of smoke billowed from burning military vehicles south of Kirkuk province, in the Hawija district.
    ISIL also advanced into areas south of Kirkuk province on the borders with Mosul and took control of a number of areas in Hawaija districts before they were taken back by police and army forces.
    Security sources have said that insurgents overran parts of the city of Tikrit, south of Baiji.
    ISIL has become a dominant player in Iraq and Syria where it has seized over the past year a string of cities, often fighting other Sunni groups, with the aim of establishing an Islamic Caliphate.
    An estimated 500,000 Iraqis have already fled their homes in Mosul, home to some 2 million people, and the surrounding province in fear, the International Organisation for Migration said on Wednesday.
    The fall of Mosul is a slap to Baghdad's efforts to quash Sunni militants who have regained ground and strength in Iraq over the past year, seizing Sunni towns of Falluja and parts of Ramadi in the desert west of Baghdad at the start of the year.
    The United States, which pulled its troops out from Iraq to and half years ago, pledged to help Iraqi leaders "push back against this aggression" as the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked parliament to declare a state of emergency.
    It said Washington would support "a strong, coordinated response", adding that "ISIL is not only a threat to the stability of Iraq, but a threat to the entire region".
    ISIL control in the Sunni Anbar province as well as around Mosul in the north, would help the Islamist group consolidate its grip along the barely populated frontier with Syria, where they are fighting President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Shi'ite Iran.
    Nearly 800 people were killed in violence across Iraq in May - the highest monthly death toll so far this year. Last year was the deadliest since the sectarian bloodletting of 2006-07.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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