Region

BAGHDAD — A major offensive by jihadists is allowing Iraqi Kurds to take control of disputed territory that Baghdad has long opposed them adding to their autonomous northern region.

With federal forces abandoning their posts, Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, are filling the vacuum in some areas — defending them from the militants but also putting them under Kurdish control.

Jihadists and their allies have overrun all of the northern province of Nineveh and significant areas of neighbouring Salaheddin and Kirkuk provinces, as well as part of northern Diyala, in an offensive that began Monday night.

All four provinces contain territory claimed by both the federal government and the three-province Kurdistan region, which has its own borders, security forces and government but is financially dependent on Baghdad.

On Thursday, Kurdish forces took control for the first time of the oil hub of Kirkuk. The city is at the heart of the swathe of territory the Kurds want to incorporate into their region.

“We tightened our control of Kirkuk city and are awaiting orders to move towards the areas that are controlled by ISIL,” peshmerga Brigadier General Shirko Rauf said, referring to jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Kirkuk Governor Najm Al Din Karim, himself a Kurd, said peshmerga were filling in gaps left by federal troops who withdrew from their positions in the province.

“Army forces are no longer present, as happened in Mosul and Salaheddin,” Karim said, referring to the first city to fall in the offensive and another province where militants have gained significant ground.

Kurdish leaders have long wanted the army out of Kirkuk province, and vehemently opposed the establishment of a federal military command that included it.

In a statement on the Kurdistan government’s official website, peshmerga ministry secretary general Jabbar Yawar criticised federal security personnel as being “only interested in collecting their salaries,” and said Baghdad had been warned they would not hold up.

“Peshmerga forces are in control of the majority of the Kurdistan region outside of [Kurdistan Regional Government] administration,” Yawar said, referring to the disputed areas.

John Drake, a security analyst with AKE Group, said the crisis could aid the Kurdish region in the territory dispute.

It “could end up gaining further control over territory disputed with Baghdad by bolstering its security forces around places such as Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu,” he said, referring to a disputed northern town that Kurdish forces have reinforced.

He noted that the Kurdistan region “would not face the same challenges from Baghdad as in the past because the federal authorities are evidently in an extremely poor position to do anything about the situation”.

Iraqi security forces have not performed well so far, with some throwing away their uniforms and abandoning vehicles and positions to flee the militants.

Asos Hardi, a journalist and analyst, said Kurdish forces moving into areas vacated by the army “gives them a better and wider control [of] the disputed areas”.

“But what will happen next, that’s the risk, that’s the problem,” he said.

Moving into these areas ultimately puts Kurdish forces in the line of fire.

This risk was demonstrated on Thursday when a roadside bomb targeted Jaafar Mustafa, the Kurdish minister responsible for the peshmerga, as he returned from inspecting units in Kirkuk province.

Mustafa survived the blast, which took place west of Kirkuk city, but it killed a peshmerga fighter, Rauf said.

The presence of jihadists in provinces that neighbour the Kurds’ autonomous region also carries economic risks.

Drake noted that “the fact a major Islamist organisation has now established a presence right on [Kurdistan’s] doorstep will be a major source of concern for would-be investors and local residents alike”.

Hardi said that if militants succeed in controlling Sunni Arab areas of the country, “this will divide Iraq, practically, into three different parts”.

It is “a very dangerous situation... not only for Kurds, but for all Iraq,” Hardi said.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s capital Beirut is awash with flags. But instead of the usual political colours, they’re the bunting of World Cup competitors like Brazil and Germany being flown by local mega-fans.

Lebanon’s national team didn’t qualify for the event starting Thursday, and the tiny nation has no great sporting track record.

But its citizens display a near-fanatical enthusiasm for chosen proxy nations, mainly countries that tend to do well in the World Cup and host large Lebanese populations, draping cars, homes and businesses with “their” country’s colours.

“I just love Germany. I love the way they play the game,” says 19-year-old Elias Nohra.

He spent $50 having a Germany flag sticker affixed to the roof of his car.

“Money well-spent,” he says with a grin.

Some drivers have gone further, trailing fluttering flags from their cars, draping scarves round their rear-view mirrors, and even plastering semi-transparent flag stickers across entire windshields.

The mania is a chance for the often unstable country to escape the daily grind, and good news for vendors, with even those who usually sell cell phones or children’s toys adding flags to their stock to cash in.

“Every day we get closer to the World Cup, flag sales increase,” says 23-year-old vendor Ali Nasrallah in the Sabra, Palestinian camp in Beirut.

“The flags we sell most are Brazil, Germany and Italy.”

A survey of the landscape makes it clear that Brazil, Germany and Italy are indeed local favourites, with the three nations best represented among the flags flying from cars and homes.

Family ties spur support 

That comes as no surprise to 23-year-old Rayan Musallem, a sports journalists and Brazil fanatic.

She belongs to an official fan club working with Brazil’s embassy to organise match viewings.

“I’ve loved Brazil since I was little, it might be because my family nicknamed me Rio, but to be honest I just love the country, their passion for football and the way they play,” she says.

Like many Lebanese, she knows families who have emigrated to Brazil, which is home to the largest concentration of Lebanese in the diaspora.

Such ties through emigration are one reason Lebanese cite in choosing which country to support.

“I’m with France because all my family is there,” says 50-year-old Aida Qassis, who owns a toy shop but has added flags to her stock.

“You know, Lebanon took its independence from France and France still supports us, so I hope they do well in the World Cup,” she says.

Elie Sarkis inherited his support of Brazil from his father and grandfather.

“They’ve always loved Brazil, I think in part because they were impressed that when players scored they’d cross themselves and thank God,” he says.

“My family are very religious, and they like that in Brazil, people might be poor, but they have faith, and when they get rich they still love their country and have faith in God.”

But for many Lebanese, the decision to pick a team is swayed solely by their favourite players.

Argentina has seen its popularity here boosted by the high-profile career of Lionel Messi, and Portugal commands an outsize following on the basis of its star striker Cristiano Ronaldo.

‘A unifying event’ 

For 24-year-old Tony Rizk, it was legendary goalkeeper Oliver Kahn who started his passion for Germany’s team.

Last year, he fulfilled a life-long dream by visiting Munich, and this year he and the fan club he founded are working with Germany’s embassy in Lebanon to organise viewing events.

Like many Lebanese, he describes World Cup mania as one of the few non-political events in a country often marked by political and sectarian divisions.

“Our club has fans from everywhere in Lebanon. You see Muslims, Christians, everyone, watching the games,” he says.

“It’s a unifying event.”

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian man in Gaza on Wednesday after rocket fire from the territory prompted Israel’s premier to warn he holds Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responsible.

Two Palestinians were also wounded in the evening raid in the northern Gaza Strip, the emergency services said.

The dead man, 30-year-old Mohammed Al Awour, and one of the wounded were travelling on a motorbike and were the apparent targets. A seven-year-old boy who was passing by on foot was also wounded.

The Israeli military said it had targeted “terrorists affiliated to the international jihad”, its designation for Al Qaeda inspired groups in Gaza.

Local sources also said that the two men on the bike were radical Salafist fighters.

Awour was involved in numerous rocket attacks on southern Israel in recent years and particularly over the past month, the Israeli army said in a statement.

He belonged to “a violent and extremist Salafist cell which attempted to organise several terrorist attacks against Israel,” the army statement added.

Abbas, who swore in a new merged government for the Palestinian territories last week replacing the Hamas administration in Gaza, condemned the rocket fire which Israeli officials said hit the Eshkol region without causing any casualties or damage.

Israel had previously held Hamas responsible for all rocket fire from Gaza, regardless of who carried it out.

Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds Abbas, who heads the unity government, responsible, a spokesman said.

“Abbas is responsible and accountable for rockets that are fired at Israeli towns and cities by terrorists in the Gaza Strip,” Ofir Gendelman said on Twitter.

Netanyahu welcomed the deadly Israel air raid and promised that the army and the Shin Bet security service would “continue to take strong action against all those who try to attack the security of Israel’s citizens”.

Reacting to the rocket fire, Abbas’s office said he “condemns the rocket fire and calls for honouring past agreements”.

The United States criticised the rocket attack on Israeli soil but said it would still work with the new Palestinian government.

“We condemn all rocket fire from Gaza. It is unprovoked aggression against civilian targets and is totally unacceptable,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

“President Abbas must do all in his power to prevent deterioration in the security situation,” Psaki said, welcoming his condemnation of the attack which came from the militant Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

The US does “acknowledge the reality that Hamas currently controls Gaza,” the spokeswoman said.

But she noted that there were no members affiliated with Hamas in the new government, and that the US would continue to work with it.

DOHA — Mariam Saleh avoids malls and outdoor markets on the weekends because the low-cut tops, sheer dresses and miniskirts that foreign women wear reveal much more than she would like her impressionable young children to see.

Saleh is part of a campaign in Qatar that was spurred by locals who are fed up with the way many tourists and visitors dress, especially as temperatures soar in the Gulf Arab nation. The campaigners say Qatar is, after all, their country, and they should not be the ones feeling uncomfortable because visitors want to show some skin or dress like they would back home.

The campaign is aimed at encouraging foreign women to dress more conservatively. However, it is not spearheaded by religious hardliners, but by moderate locals who are concerned that a steady influx of foreigners is threatening to uproot their customs and traditions, which are intertwined with 1,400 years of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula.

The campaigners say they are mothers and wives, but also gatekeepers of Qatar’s Islamic society. Most Qatari women cover their hair and wear long, loose black robes. Many also cover their faces as is common in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where morality police enforce the region’s strictest dress code on locals and foreigners alike.

The campaigners began handing out flyers this week. They will set up booths on June 20 throughout the capital, Doha, and plan to pass out more than 200,000 flyers to raise awareness about local sensitivities with slogans such as: “Leggings are not pants” and “If you are in Qatar, you are one of us.”

Children will be wearing the slogans on T-shirts, and men and women will be passing out traditional coffee, chocolates and roses along with the brochures.

The government, which allows alcohol in hotels to accommodate foreigners, is not involved in the campaign, which is being funded by volunteers, as well as a women’s business club in Qatar. The campaigners say it is a grass-roots effort aimed at spreading information to foreigners rather than pressing for new laws or reforms. Political activism of any kind is heavily restricted by Qatar’s ruling monarchy.

Similar efforts to curb Westernisation are under way in other Gulf countries. In Kuwait, a lawmaker is calling for a ban on public “nudity” — a reference to bikinis on the beach and at hotel poolside. In Bahrain, lawmakers frequently call for banning alcohol in hotels, and in the United Arab Emirates, locals launched a similar dress code campaign in 2012.

While some malls in the UAE ticketed women for showing shoulders and knees, the government did not move to create any specific laws against immodest dress. Qatar’s pro-Western government, which benefits from tourism and foreign investment, is also not expected to enact any such laws.

The tiny nation is home to the world’s third-largest gas reserves. A rush of petrodollars transformed its capital in just a few decades from a coastal fishing town into a centre for global investment. The speed of the transformation has stunned Qatar’s conservative, tight-knit population.

Qataris currently make up less than 10 per cent of the country’s 2.1 million people, with most of the population comprised of Asian, African and Middle Eastern guest workers, as well as Western expatriates living in the country temporarily.

Like other Gulf states, Qatar relies on millions of foreigners to provide everything from the muscle to build high-rises to world-class experts to lead mega-projects. It is preparing to host one of the world’s largest sporting events, the football World Cup in 2022.

Four years ago, concerned citizens launched a campaign called “One of Us” to encourage foreign women to cover from their shoulders to their knees, but the campaign had little impact on visitors who felt out of touch with Qatari society.

This time around the theme is “Reflect Your Respect”. The flyers that will be passed out have one central plea: “Help us preserve Qatar’s culture and values.”

“We’re not telling you not to dress up. Get dressed up, but with respect, with modesty,” businesswoman Suhaila Al Harab, a supporter of the campaign, said. “I’m coming to a conservative country. I have to respect the culture of this society. This is a sensitive society and one has to be considerate of this point.”

Speaking from her home in Doha, Harab says her boys are inundated with Western movies, music and fashion trends. She says Qatar is used to foreigners and is ready to welcome people from around the world for the World Cup, but she is urging visitors to be open to learning and embracing new ideas.

“It’s very nice for a woman to dress modestly,” she said.

British tourist Roger Maynard recently visited Doha’s old souk, or market, with his Spanish wife, who wore a sleeveless dress that came down to her knees. He said they were being careful not to dress inappropriately.

“I think when in Rome, you should behave like the Romans, and I think you should be conscious of the local culture, and I think it’s quite reasonable,” he said of the campaign’s request.

“That doesn’t mean to say I agree with the culture or particularly the way women are, in a sense, discriminated against. But nonetheless, you come to visit a country, you should accept the culture of that country.”

Among Qatari men and women, conservative dress is seen as a way of deterring premarital sex and adultery, as well as treating women with respect. Islamic teachings hold that most or all of a woman’s body should be concealed from people outside her immediate family.

“The earth has an outer sphere, an atmosphere, to cover and protect it. The egg has its shell. Everything has something that protects it,” Saleh said. “We feel that a woman is like a pearl. She has to have a shell to grow and flourish.”

TRIPOLI — Angry motorists in Libya’s capital Tripoli queued to fill up on Thursday, some having slept in their cars for nights as petrol stations awaited promised supplies from a state oil firm.

“I have been queuing in front of this gas station for two days,” said one driver in a long line at a petrol station in central Tripoli. “It is very depressing. My kids have finished their exams and I want to go out with them but unfortunately we cannot”.

Libya is in turmoil as the government struggles to control the militias who helped oust Muammar Qadhafi in 2011 but now defy state authority and seize oil ports at will.

The North African country has struggled to keep the 120,000 barrel a day Zawiya refinery that supplies western Libya running after protesters closed the connecting El Sharara field.

State oil firm Brega Petroleum Marketing Company, which is in charge of delivering fuel to petrol stations, said a lack of security at some petrol stations where motorists were lining up made it difficult to deliver supplies.

“We supplied several petrol stations with a large amount of fuel,” said Brega spokesman Fathi Al Hasmi. “Also another tanker with fuel arrived at Zawiya port, but the security problems remains.”

Officials at Zawiya refinery declined to comment, while state-owned National Oil Corp., Brega’s parent firm, could not be reached.

Ordinary Libyans, some taking it in turns with relatives to keep their place in queues, were getting increasingly fed up.

Waiting motorist Mohamed Abdullah Ajwaid said: “Most of the gas stations in Tripoli are closed, and we do not know the reason.”

On Wednesday, acting Oil Minister Omar Shakmak said Libya had started diverting cargoes from its two offshore fields used for exports, its last two fields unaffected by the wave of protests at oilfields.

This will further reduce exports, which have fallen to less than 200,000 barrels per day from 1.4 million bpd when the protests started in July, eroding public finances.

DUBAI/VIENNA — Iran is “busy redesigning” a planned research reactor to sharply cut its potential output of plutonium, a senior Iranian official said in comments that seemed to address a thorny issue in negotiations with big powers.

The future of the Arak plant is among several sticking points that Iran and six world powers need to resolve if they are to reach a deal by late July on limiting Iran’s controversial nuclear programme in exchange for an end to sanctions.

The main stumbling block is the permissible scope of Iran’s uranium enrichment. The lack of progress in bridging negotiating gaps has left the self-imposed
July 20 deadline for a long-term settlement looking increasingly unrealistic, and Iran has said a six-month extension may be necessary.

The West is worried that Arak, once operational, could provide a significant supply of plutonium — one of two materials, along with highly enriched uranium, that can produce a nuclear explosion.

Iran says the 40-megawatt Arak reactor is intended to produce isotopes for cancer and other medical treatments. It agreed to halt installation work at Arak under a six-month interim deal struck with the powers last November that was geared to buy time for negotiations on a comprehensive accord.

After the latest round of talks in Vienna in May, a diplomat from one of the powers said Iran had appeared to row back on its previous readiness to address Western fears about the nuclear weapons potential of Arak. Iran has since dismissed one mooted solution as “ridiculous”.

Redesigning

But the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, appeared to return to a more conciliatory stance in comments to the official IRNA news agency late on Wednesday.

The amount of plutonium the reactor will be able to yield will be reduced to less than 1kg a year from 9-10kg  in its original design, he said. Western experts say 9-10kg is more than enough for one nuclear bomb.

“We are currently busy redesigning that reactor to arrange for that alteration,” Salehi was quoted by IRNA as saying.

After discussions with senior US officials in Geneva earlier this week, Iran questioned the feasibility of the July deadline for a permanent accord, intended to minimise the risk of a wider Middle East war over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

While an extension is possible under the terms of the talks, experts believe both Iran and the powers may face domestic political pressures to toughen their terms during this extra time period, making a breakthrough harder to achieve.

The next round of negotiations will be held in the Austrian capital Vienna on June 16-20.

“There is a lot of work to be done to reach a comprehensive, credible and lasting agreement,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said. He said talks between French and Iranian officials in Geneva on Wednesday — part of a series of bilateral meetings between the powers and Iran — were “useful”.

In April, Princeton University experts said Arak’s annual plutonium production could be lowered to less than 1kg if Iran changed the way Arak was fuelled and lowered its power capacity.

Iran could revert

However, Iran expert Ali Vaez said the major powers and Israel — Iran’s arch enemy — remained concerned that Iran could suddenly revert to the original design, and build a reprocessing facility to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel.

“That would be a lengthy but hard-to-stop process,” Vaez, of the International Crisis Group think tank, said in a report.

Heavy-water reactors like Arak, fuelled by natural uranium, are seen as especially suitable for yielding plutonium.

Nuclear expert David Albright said a key issue in the negotiations was whether Iran would agree to change the Arak reactor core to one sized for low-enriched uranium fuel.

“Then it cannot revert back to a natural uranium core so easily. As of two weeks ago, Iran had not agreed to that,” Albright, of the US-based Institute for Science and International Security, said in an e-mail.

The powers want Iran to scale back its capacity to refine uranium in order to deny it any capability to quickly produce enough of the material for a bomb. Iran says it needs to refine uranium to fuel a planned network of nuclear power plants.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said this week the talks were “still hitting a wall” on the enrichment issue.

After meeting Iranian officials in Rome this week, a senior Russian foreign ministry official said some aspects of a comprehensive solution to the Iranian nuclear problem could be agreed during next week’s meeting, but more effort was needed.

“The chances for it are increasing. This adds to an optimism but requires additional efforts,” the Russian news agencies Itar Tass and Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Moscow’s chief negotiator, as saying.

SANAA — Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Yemeni president’s house in the capital Sanaa on Wednesday to call for the fall of the government, angry at a city-wide power cut about to enter its third day and severe petrol shortages.

The blackout in the capital, widely blamed on the sabotage of oil pipelines by armed tribesmen with grievances against the government, is among the longest dark spells in almost three years of patchy electricity supply since Arab Spring protests unseated Yemen’s former president in 2011.

The pipeline attacks have deprived the state of revenue to buy fuel products, increasing the cost of food in the Arab world’s poorest country.

“Leave us, leave us, down with the corrupt leader!” angry residents chanted in front of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s house.

“This failure by the government has turned our lives into hell: no electricity, no gasoline or water. They have to leave us right away,” said protester Mohamed Sharaf.

Sanaa’s two million residents have been forced to light their homes with candles or private generators, fuel for which is increasingly expensive.

Hundreds of vehicles clogging gas stations have paralysed traffic, causing the authorities to shut down streets including one that connects Hadi’s private home with the presidential palace.

A revolt by Shiite militants in the North, secessionist unrest in the South and Al Qaeda militancy across the country has sapped Yemen’s economy, as oil and water resources decline.

Security forces have struggled to face down the insurgents or to prevent the attacks on oil and electricity facilities.

Official news agency Saba reported that tribesmen had attacked power lines in the eastern province of Marib on Tuesday, leading to the blackouts in Sanaa and other areas.

In a separate incident, the army said it foiled an attempt to blow up a power station in the southern province of Shabwa with two explosives-laden cars on Wednesday, according to Saba.

Wealthy Gulf neighbours and the West fear for the stability of Yemen, which shares a long border with the world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia.

The United States has stepped up its support for its government and military, at the same time it has repeatedly launched deadly drone strikes on suspected Al Qaeda militants there.

BEIRUT — The Al Qaeda breakaway group that seized much of Iraq’s northern city of Mosul has encircled the city of Deir Al Zour across the border in Syria, activists said Wednesday.

“They have surrounded the city. There are no entrances or exits left for people to flee,” said a Syrian activist in the region who has contacts inside Deir Al Zour and who uses the name Salar. The information was confirmed by a second activist who uses the name Abu Abdullah, and who is based near Deir Al Zour.

The city, which straddles the Euphrates in the northeastern corner of Syria, is one of the oil-rich region’s last strongholds of resistance to the Islamic State.

Their control runs some 283 kilometres eastwards across the Euphrates, from the northeast provincial capital of Raqqa to the town of Busayra in the province of Deir Al Zour, said Abu Abdullah. From there, they are some 101 kilometres from the Syrian town of Bukamal on the border with Iraq.

Their control extends upwards through another province known as Hassakeh that borders Turkey. But they do not control a string of Kurdish-dominated border towns, Salar said.

Across Syria, in the northern province of Aleppo, a rebel coalition dominated by Islamic factions announced a new push to dislodge Islamic State fighters from their strongholds in the towns of Manbij and Al  Bab, and surrounding villages.

The announcement was reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and other sources inside Syria.

Details on the scale of the new offensive were not immediately known. But one of the groups in the coalition, the Islamic Front, claimed that its fighters recently captured four villages from the Islamic State and killed 17 of its fighters.

The infighting is part of broader rebel-on-rebel clashes that have raged across opposition-held northern Syria since early January.

The new offensive appears to have begun late Monday, said an Aleppo-based activist who uses the name Abu Al Hassan.

One video uploaded on social media networks shows fighters of the new coalition firing weapons from the back of a pickup truck.

“We will purge this area from the Islamic State,” says one fighter. The video appeared authentic and matched Associated Press reporting of the events.

The rebel infighting has killed some 6,000 people — civilians and fighters — since January, according to the observatory.

TIKRIT, Iraq — Sunni rebels from an Al Qaeda splinter group overran the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Wednesday and closed in on the biggest oil refinery in the country, making further gains in their rapid military advance against the Shiite-led government.

The threat to the Baiji refinery comes after militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern city of Mosul, advancing their aim of creating a Sunni caliphate straddling the border between Iraq and Syria.

The fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, is a blow to Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s attempts to defeat the militants, who have seized territory in Iraq over the past year following the withdrawal of US forces.

About 500,000 Iraqis have fled Mosul, home to two million people, and the surrounding province, many seeking safety in the autonomous Kurdistan region. Insurgents are now in control of between 10 and 15 per cent of Iraqi territory, excluding Kurdistan.

Security sources said ISIL militants on Wednesday drove more than 60 vehicles into Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, occupying the provincial government headquarters and raising the black flag of ISIL.

“Our forces were caught by surprise, they never expected ISIL would use police and army Humvee vehicles, we mistook them for government forces and it was too late to stop them,” said a police captain who fled from Tikrit to Samarra.

“We are fighting devils and not ordinary people”.

Around 100 ISIL fighters held mass prayers in central Tikrit after taking control.

Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said Iraq’s leaders must unite to face a “mortal” threat. “There has to be a quick response to what has happened,” he said during a trip to Greece.

Zebari said Baghdad would work with forces from Kurdistan in the north to drive the fighters out of Mosul after they put Iraqi security forces to flight on Tuesday.

In a show of the militants’ reach, a car bombing in a crowded market in the town of Safwan, which sits on Iraq’s southernmost border with Kuwait, killed five people.

Conspiracy

Maliki described the fall of Mosul as a “conspiracy” and said those who had abandoned their posts would be punished. He also said Iraqis were volunteering in several provinces to join army brigades to fight ISIL.

In a statement on its Twitter account, ISIL said it had taken Mosul as part of a plan “to conquer the entire state and cleanse it from the apostates”, referring to the province of Nineveh of which the city is the capital.

Around 80 Turkish citizens seized in two separate incidents in Mosul were being held hostage by the militants, the foreign ministry in Ankara said.

Militants executed 10 soldiers and policemen on Wednesday near the town of Riyadh, 60km southwest of Kirkuk, after setting up a checkpoint on the road, police sources said.

ISIL, led by Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, broke with Al Qaeda’s international leader, Osama Bin Laden’s former lieutenant Ayman Al Zawahiri, and has clashed with Al Qaeda fighters in Syria.

ISIL’s advances show that Iraq’s security forces — trained and equipped by Washington at a cost of nearly $25 billion and numbering more than a million — are outmatched against insurgents who once took on the might of the United States.

Overnight on Tuesday, ISIL militants moved on Baiji, home to Iraq’s largest refinery, which can process 300,000 barrels per day and supplies oil products to most of Iraq’s provinces and as well as Baghdad.

Security sources said the fighters drove into the town of Baiji in armed vehicles, torching the court house and police station before freeing prisoners.

The militants later withdrew into surrounding villages after tribal leaders persuaded them not to take over the energy installations in Baiji, local officials and residents said.

Dominant player

ISIL has become a dominant player in Iraq and Syria, where it has seized a string of cities over the past year, often fighting other Sunni groups.

The United States expressed concern about the deteriorating security situation in Iraq and pledged “any appropriate assistance” to help the Iraqi government.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States believed that the Baiji refinery remained under control of the Iraqi government.

ISIL control in the Sunni Anbar province as well as around Mosul would help the Islamist group consolidate its grip along the frontier with Syria, where it is fighting President Bashar Assad, an ally of Shiite Iran.

Members of Iraq’s Shiite majority have also been crossing the border to fight in Syria alongside Assad’s forces.

In Sadr City, a Shiite slum in Baghdad, men were stockpiling weapons in anticipation of a battle against ISIL.

“The army has proven to be a big failure. People have begun to depend on themselves because ISIL may enter Baghdad any minute,” said Muhannad Al Darraji from Sadr City.

At about the same time, a suicide bomber blew himself up in Sadr City, killing at least 18 people. A further 11 people were killed when a car bomb exploded near the northern Kadhimiya district, where there is a Shiite shrine.

Displacement

The governor of Mosul blamed Maliki for failing to act upon his warnings about the threat of ISIL.

“The entry of ISIL to Mosul was through the desert from Syria,” Atheel Al Nujaifi said. “There are camps in the desert and we have repeatedly asked the government to bomb these camps instead of luring ISIL into the cities to fight it.”

At a checkpoint on the road between Mosul and Erbil, residents who fled with little more than the clothes on their backs were stunned by the turn of events and did not know what to make of their city’s new occupants.

A 40-year-old man who fled the city with his family said: “We are frightened because we don’t know who they are. They call themselves revolutionaries. They told us not to be scared and that they came to liberate and free us from oppression.”

Critics say the failure of Maliki, a Shiite Muslim who has been in power for eight years, to address grievances among the once dominant Sunni minority led to a rise in Sunni militancy and pushed Sunni groups and tribes to rally behind ISIL.

Many Sunnis feel disenfranchised and some have made common cause with foreign Islamist radicals, first against the US troops that overthrew Saddam in 2003 and now against Shiite-led Iraqi forces.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel, looking to avoid censure at the FIFA Congress in Brazil on Wednesday, has defended its arrest of a Palestine national team player, telling the world football body he was a courier for Islamist fighters.

Sameh Fares Mohammad had intended to “harm the state of Israel and its citizens”, Israeli Sports Minister Limor Livnat wrote in a letter to FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

The Palestine Football Association (PFA) has been lobbying against Israel at FIFA over Mohammad’s arrest by the Shin Bet security service in April and restrictions on the movement of other Palestinian players and officials in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel cites security concerns for such restrictions, but has drawn international calls for greater freedom of movement for Palestinians through Israeli military checkpoints.

Livnat wrote in her letter that Mohammad was detained by Israeli security officials upon his return with the Palestine national team from a training camp in Qatar in April.

She said Mohammad had met a Hamas fighter in Qatar whom Israel had freed in a prisoner swap in 2011. He had given Mohammad money, a mobile phone and written messages to bring back to Hamas officials in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.

“He understood that these were clandestine meetings and even kept them secret from the team’s other members and its management,” Livnat wrote in the letter which the sports ministry made public.

Livnat said that during a football tournament in Qatar in April, Mohammad had met Talal Ibrahim Abd Al Rahman Sharim of the Hamas Islamist movement, a group classified by the West as a terrorist organisation.

Sharim had been serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison for security offences, until his release along with more than 1,000 other jailed Palestinians in a 2011 swap for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted in 2006 in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Mohammad had made “cynical use of his sports activities exit permit to promote Hamas’ activities,” Livnat added.

“I am confident that you will find this information worrisome and constituting clear evidence of the misuse of sports in a fashion that threatens the security of Israeli civilians,” she said.

Abdel-Majid Hejja, a senior PFA official said Mohammad had no previous political affiliation and had never been arrested before. He accused Israel of fabricating the allegations.

“This player has no connection to any political party and had never been arrested in the past. Israel can throw accusations towards anyone. Israeli pretexts are always there and ready,” Hejja told Reuters.

PFA President Jibril Rajoub said last month that FIFA had established a task force that included Palestinian and Israeli delegates but this had failed to improve the main issues of freedom of movement and access for Palestinian athletes.

Earlier this week, the PFA said Israel had denied its deputy general-secretary, Mohammad Ammassi, permission to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, from where he would have crossed to Jordan and on to Brazil.

The PFA accused Israel of arbitrarily denying passage to Ammassi. An Israeli official said Ammassi was banned from leaving the Gaza Strip because he had failed to follow procedure and submit his request at least 10 days prior to travel.

The official said Ammassi could re-submit his request, which would be duly considered.