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Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces helped Iraqi troops regain control over most of Tikrit, according to Iranian security sources.
Confronted by the threat of Sunni Muslim forces overtaking Shiite-dominated Iraq, Iran responded to aid its Arab ally and sent Revolutionary Guard fighters to Iraq, according to Iranian security sources.
Islamist rebel fighters captured two more Iraqi towns overnight in a relentless sweep south towards the capital Baghdad in a campaign to recreate a medieval caliphate carved out of fragmenting Iraq and Syria.
U.S. President Barack Obama threatened military strikes against the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Thursday, highlighting the gravity of ISIL’s threat to redraw borders in an oil-rich region with the risk of any new entity turning into a launch-pad for attacks on Western interests.
Al-Qaida-inspired militants seized effective control Wednesday of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, expanding their offensive closer to the Iraqi capital as soldiers and security forces abandoned their posts following clashes with the insurgents.
Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took control a day earlier of much of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in a major blow to the authority of the country’s Shiite government. An estimated half a million residents fled the economically important city.
Insurgents took control of Iraq’s northernmost city Mosul in the early hours of this morning; this comes after four days of fighting in the city which was attacked by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Fighters overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants.
Forty-five people were killed on Sunday in Syria’s eastern Deir Az-Zor region in clashes between rival jihadist groups, reported the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday.