Baghdad launches air strikes on insurgents in Mosul

Extremists seize control of swath of northern Iraq Iraq's Shia-dominated government launched air strikes on Sunni insurgent positions in and around the city of Mosul on Thursday as Islamist forces hurtled toward the capital and Kurdish troops seized control of the key oil city of Kirkuk.

The latest moves by the country's major ethnic and sectarian groups raised fears of a deepening of Iraq's de facto partition into separate Shia, Kurdish and Sunni areas. "The state of Iraq is in imminent collapse," said Faisal Istrabadi, Iraq's former deputy ambassador to the UN.

State television aired images of what it described as air strikes on insurgent positions in Mosul, seized on Tuesday after a days-long assault by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) and its allies, as Iraqi forces abandoned their posts and fled. Turkish media also reported the Turkish military was flying surveillance drones over Mosul in a co-ordinated move with Baghdad.

Shares in oil explorers focused on northern Iraq tumbled as investors took fright amid fears the violence could spread to Kurdistan, a mere 80km away.

Genel Energy, run by Tony Hayward, former chief executive of BP, have fallen 5 per cent since Wednesday morning, while DNO International is down 8 per cent and Gulf Keystone 16 per cent. But the companies tried to reassure nervous investors that events in Mosul will not affect their operations. "For us it's business as usual," a Genel spokesman said.

Amid mounting concern in the West and the region at the rapid turn of events, the US was examining air strikes and other forms of direct military action against the insurgents but the White House is reluctant to involve itself again in the war in Iraq.

President Barack Obama refused to rule out any potential response to the violence in Iraq. "What we've seen over the last couple of days indicates Iraq's going to need more help" from the US and from the international community, he said in the Oval Office. The White House had been working "around the clock" on options for how to respond and, at this point "I don't rule out anything," he said.

Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, called for a volunteer army to fight the Islamist insurgent groups invading the country, and a powerful Shia cleric has urged the creation of a militia to defend southern Iraqi holy sites from Isis and its allies, which were battling to control Samarra and other Sunni towns on the road south from Mosul to Baghdad.

Iraqi media reported clashes between Islamist insurgents and Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad, as Isis warned it would take its battle to the cities of Najaf and Karbala, shrine and seminary cities holy to the Shia faith.

"Go to Caliphate Baghdad. We have a score to settle," Isis spokesman Abu Mohamed al-Adnani urged in an audio recording posted online. "We will settle our differences not in Samarra or Baghdad but in Karbala, the filth-ridden city, and in Najaf, the city of polytheism."

Politicians in Baghdad remained in paralysis. An initiative by Mr Maliki to get Sunni, Shia and Kurdish leaders to hand him extraordinary powers failed to muster a quorum in parliament. Leaders of the country's three main groups emerged from a closed-door meeting at the home of former prime minister Ibrahim Jafaari late on Wednesday without securing a formula for breaking the stalemate that has created fertile ground for the insurgent threat.

The fast-moving developments followed the spectacular collapse of Iraqi security forces in the country's north and northwest on Tuesday and Wednesday after they were confronted by Isis and allied insurgent groups, including Sunni Islamist and nationalist elements long active in Iraq.

Kurds have enjoyed semi-autonomous status in their northeastern enclave for 23 years but have long coveted Kirkuk, which is also home to Arabs and Turkmen. Shia overwhelmingly dominate the country's oil-rich south and the capital, Baghdad. Sunnis in parliament have been agitating for several years for an autonomous region to free them from the authority of the Baghdad government.

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Highlighting the sense of flux, Mr Istrabadi, now a professor at Indiana University, said: "It appears that elements of the Iraqi army, which was disbanded by the US occupation authority in 2003, might be involved as well [as Isis]".

Adding to the crisis was the mobilisation of Shia militias, which have a reputation for brutalising Sunni civilians. Iran's al-Alam television reported the formation of volunteer companies of militia culled from the Shia south to battle alongside regular armed forces in an apparent emulation of a similar strategy by the neighbouring Syrian regime fighting off a Sunni insurgency.

"I cannot stand still in front of the anticipated danger to our holy places, so I ask people to co-ordinate with some government agencies to form peace brigades to defend the holy sites," said Moqtada al-Sadr, a hardline Shia cleric whose loyalists fought US and Iraqi forces for years, in a statement published by Iraqi media.

Defending Shia holy sites is often the reason young Shia men give for heading to Syria to help the regime of Bashar al-Assad fight against Sunni rebels.

Turkish media also reported the formation of militias among ethnic Turkmen in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, to defend the town from Isis.

"My guess is that the Shia militias will stand and fight - it will be a bloodbath," said James A. Russell, professor of counterinsurgency at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

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