Al-Qaida offshoot advances toward Baghdad

Militants seize northern city of Mosul; an estimated 500,000 Iraqis have already fled.

By Reuters | Jun. 11, 2014


Sunni insurgents from an Al-Qaida splinter group closed in on 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 – moving south toward Baghdad after driving into the town of Baiji late on Tuesday in armed vehicles, torching the court house and police station after freeing prisoners.

The militants offered safe passage to some 250 men guarding the refinery on the outskirts of Baiji on condition they leave.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called on his country's leaders to come together to face "the serious, mortal" threat. "The response has to be soon. There has to be a quick response to what has happened," he said during a trip to Greece.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.598190