Militants vow to invade Baghdad and impose strict Shariah law

Trumpeting their victory, the militants also declared they would impose Shariah law in Mosul and other areas they have captured.

In northern Iraq, Kurdish security forces moved to fill the power vacuum - taking over an air base and other posts abandoned by the military in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.

The move further raised concern the country could end up partitioned into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish zones.

Three planeloads of Americans are being evacuated from a major Iraqi air base in Sunni territory north of the capital Baghdad, US officials said, while Germany urged its citizens to immediately leave parts of Iraq, including Baghdad.

US president Barack Obama said Iraq will need more help from the United States, but he did not specify what it would be willing to provide.

Senior US officials said Washington is considering whether to conduct drone missions in Iraq.

Following a UN Security Council meeting over the crisis, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, the council president, said the UN envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, told members by video conference that “there is no immediate danger of the violence spreading to Baghdad”, and that that the city “is well protected and the government is in control”.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki had asked parliament to declare a state of emergency that would give him and his Shia-led government increased powers to run the country, but parliamentarians failed to reach quorum.

The Islamic State, whose Sunni fighters have captured large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, aims to create an Islamic emirate spanning both sides of the border.

It has pushed deep into parts of Iraq’s Sunni heartland once controlled by US forces because police and military forces melted away after relatively brief clashes, including in Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul.

Skirmishes continued in several areas. Two communities near Tikirt – the key oil refining centre of Beiji and the city of Samarra, home to a prominent Shia shrine – remain in government hands, according to Iraqi intelligence officials.

The price of oil jumped to above $106 a barrel as the insurgency raised the risk of disruptions to supplies.

In its statement, the Islamic State declared it would start implementing its strict version of Shariah law in Mosul and other regions it had overrun.

It said women should stay in their homes for modesty reasons, warned it would cut off the hands of thieves and told residents to attend daily prayers.

It said Sunnis in the military and police should abandon their posts and “repent”, or else “face only death”.

The Islamic State’s spokesman vowed to take the fight into Baghdad. In a sign of the group’s confidence, he even boasted that its fighters will take the southern Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf, which hold two of the holiest shrines for Shia Muslims.

“We will march toward Baghdad because we have an account to settle there,” he said in an audio recording posted on militant websites commonly used by the group.

Baghdad does not appear to be in imminent danger of a similar assault, although Sunni insurgents have stepped up car bombings and suicide attacks in the capital recently.

While ISIL fighters gained the most attention in this week’s swift advances, it was increasingly clear that other Sunnis were joining the uprising.

Several militant groups posted photos on social media purporting to show Iraqi military hardware captured by their own fighters, suggesting a broader-based rebellion like that in neighboring Syria.

In Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, overrun by militants Wednesday, witnesses said fighters raised posters of the late dictator and Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, his former deputy who escaped the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and eluded security forces ever since.

With its large Shia population, Baghdad would be a far harder target for the militants. So far, they have stuck to the Sunni heartland and former Sunni insurgent strongholds where people are already alienated by Mr al-Maliki’s government over allegations of discrimination and mistreatment.

The militants also would likely meet far stronger resistance, not only from government forces but by Shia militias.

Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Asaib Ahl al-Haq Shia militia vowed to defend Shia holy sites, raising the spectre of street clashes and sectarian killings.

Baghdad authorities tightened security and residents stocked up on essentials.

Barack Obama said in Washington: “We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter.”

Mr al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have pleaded with the Obama administration for more than a year for additional help to combat the growing insurgency.