The entrenched Prime Minister’s hold on power seemed uncertain as Iraq’s president appointed a new premier.

Maliki seeks to impose emergency

MOSUL — Militants overran Iraq’s second city of Mosul and the surrounding province of Nineveh on Tuesday, in a major blow to a government apparently incapable of stopping militant advances.

Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki responded by asking parliament to declare a state of emergency and announcing the government would arm citizens to fight the militants.

“All of Nineveh province fell into the hands of militants,” parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi told journalists in Baghdad, adding the gunmen were heading south towards neighbouring Salaheddin province.

An army brigadier general told AFP hundreds of militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched a major assault on the security forces late on Monday.

An Interior Ministry official said Mosul, the scene of deadly clashes on Friday and Saturday, was “outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants”.

Soldiers and police had stripped off their uniforms and fled, and the militants used loudspeakers to declare they had “come to liberate” the city of some two million people.

An AFP journalist, himself fleeing with his family, said shops were closed, a police station had been set ablaze and security forces vehicles had been burned or abandoned.

Hundreds of families were seen fleeing. Some were on foot, carrying what they could, others in vehicles with their belongings piled on the roofs.

In the Kurdish north, another AFP journalist said thousands of Mosul residents had fled for the safety of the autonomous region.

Dozens of cars and trucks stretched out from one checkpoint on the boundary of the region, as people with plastic bags, suitcases and a pram waited to enter, some with young children in tow.

“The army forces threw away their weapons and changed their clothes and left their vehicles and left the city,” said Mahmud Nuri, a displaced Mosul resident. “We didn’t see anyone fire a shot”.

The assailants seized the provincial government headquarters and the Nineveh Operations Command as well as the airport, the army general said. They also freed hundreds of prisoners from three jails.

The Turkish consulate in Mosul said ISIL fighters had captured 28 Turkish truck drivers, while a foreign ministry official said Ankara hoped they would be released once they finished unloading fuel oil at a power station.
Maliki said the Cabinet had decided to arm citizens to fight the militants. It has “created a special crisis cell to follow up on the process of volunteering and equipping and arming”, he said in televised remarks. Maliki said the Cabinet also decided to reorganize the security forces, and to ask parliament to impose emergency rule.

State television said parliament had received a joint request from Maliki and the president’s office to declare a state of emergency.

Predominantly Sunni Nineveh province has long been a militant stronghold and one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq. ISIL is also a key force in the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad in neighbouring Syria.
In April, it launched a campaign in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, which borders Nineveh, aimed at carving out an Islamic state.