Iraqi rebels seize two more towns

Obama threatens airstrikes as Sunni insurgents head south toward capital

Islamist rebel fighters captured two more Iraqi towns overnight in a relentless sweep south toward the capital Baghdad in a campaign to recreate a medieval caliphate carved out of fragmenting Iraq and Syria.

US 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 launchpad for attacks on Western interests.

In the spreading chaos, Iraqi Kurdish forces seized control of Kirkuk - an oil hub just outside their autonomous enclave that they have long seen as their traditional capital - as Iraqi government troops abandoned posts in panic over ISIL's advance.

Thrusting further to the southeast after their lightning seizure of the major Iraqi city of Mosul in the far north and the late president Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, ISIL entered two towns in Diyala province bordering Iran.

Saadiyah and Jalawla had fallen to the Sunni Muslim insurgents after government troops fled their positions, along with several villages around the Himreen mountains that have long been a hideout for militants, security sources said.

The Iraqi army fired artillery shells at Saadiyah and Jalawla from the nearby town of Muqdadiya, sending dozens of families fleeing toward Khaniqin near the Iranian border.

Obama said on Thursday he was considering "all options" to support Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated central government that took full control when the US occupation ended in 2011, eight years after the invasion that toppled Saddam.

"I don't rule out anything because we do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria," Obama said at the White House, when asked whether he was contemplating airstrikes.

"In our consultations with the Iraqis, there will be some short-term immediate things that need to be done militarily," he said. A US defense official said the United States had been flying surveillance drones over Iraq to help it fight ISIL.

US officials later said that US ground forces would not return to Iraq.

But Obama said military action alone was no panacea against ISIL. He alluded to long-standing Western complaints that Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has done little to heal sectarian rifts that have left many of Iraq's minority Sunnis, cut out of power since Saddam's demise, aggrieved and keen for revenge.

International alarm

"This should be also a wake-up call for the Iraqi government. There has to be a political component to this," Obama said.

US Vice-President Joe Biden assured Maliki by telephone that Washington was prepared to intensify and accelerate its security support. The White House had signaled on Wednesday it was looking to strengthen Iraqi forces rather than meet what one US official said were past Iraqi requests for airstrikes.

But fears of jihadist violence spreading may increase pressure for robust international action. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said international powers "must deal with the situation".

In Mosul, ISIL staged a parade of US Humvee patrol vehicles seized from a collapsing Iraqi army in the two days since its fighters drove out of the desert and overran the city.

Giving a hint of their vision of a caliphate, ISIL published Sharia rules for the territory they have carved out in northern Iraq, including a ban on drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and an edict on women to wear only all-covering, shapeless clothing.

ISIL militants were reported to have executed soldiers and policemen after their seizure of some towns.

On Friday, ISIL said it was giving soldiers and policemen a "chance to repent, ... For those asking who we are, we are the soldiers of Islam and have shouldered the responsibility to restore the glory of the Islamic Caliphate".

(China Daily 06/14/2014 page8)