Thread: Al-Qaeda over runs Iraq's third largest city

Al-Qaeda over runs Iraq's third largest city.

Posted by Bill Bissell, Admin on June 10, 2014 at 12:19pm in Patriot Action Alerts
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Is this what we can expect to see in Afghanistan when most of our troops leave that country? Will all the gains in those countries over the fourteen years be lost ?

From The Telegraph

Click Telegraph for videos:

Al-Qaeda seized control of Iraq's third biggest city on Tuesday, freeing thousands of imprisoned fellow fighters in a series of jailbreaks and sparking a mass exodus of refugees.

The assault on the city of Mosul, 225 miles north west of Baghdad, saw the Iraqi army retreat to the outskirts after a sustained assault by men armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

American Patriots let this story encourage the Congressman who still follow the Constitution, and still have guts, throw Obama and his gang out of DC.

From what is being reported here, our troops just wasted there time, blood and life. All this is under the Obama watch. Will this happen here now that the Al-Qaeda dream team have been sent home with a hand slap?

http://patriotaction.net/forum/topic...sg_share_topic

Insurgents seize Iraqi city of Mosul as troops flee

Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and al-Qeada branch, seized the Iraqi city of Mosul early Tuesday after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts.

By Liz Sly and Ahmed Ramadan June 10 at 11:44 AM

Several videos at the page link:

BEIRUT — Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists to Iraq’s teetering stability.
Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a “general mobilization” and asked parliament to declare a state of emergency, saying the government would not allow the area to fall “under the shadows of terror and terrorists.”

[Read more: Iraqi army faces death and desertions as it struggles with Anbar offensive.]

Iraq’s speaker of parliament, Osama Nujaifi, said Mosul, the effective capital of northern Iraq, is now entirely in insurgent hands.

Insurgents drove out government forces early Tuesday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, causing officials to flee government headquarters and other key buildings. (Associated Press)

“When the battle got tough in the city of Mosul, the troops dropped their weapons and abandoned their posts, making it an easy prey for the terrorists,” he told a televised news conference in Baghdad.
All key facilities are now controlled by the insurgents, including the airport and the prisons, said Nujaifi, who is from Mosul.
“Everything is fallen. It’s a crisis,” he said, appealing for international and government help to retake the city. “Having these terrorist groups control a city in the heart of Iraq threatens not only Iraq but the entire region.”
In declaring the state of emergency in a televised speech, Maliki called on “all powers — political, financial and popular — to stop the terrorism and bring life to normal in the areas controlled by the terrorists in Mosul or any other city.”
He said his government has created a special Crisis Unit to deal with the situation and warned that punishment would be meted out to “those who were reckless and those who did not rise to the challenge” of the attack on Mosul.
The speed with which one of Iraq’s biggest cities has fallen under militant control is striking and suggests the U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces are even more vulnerable than had previously been thought.
The collapse of government forces in Mosul echoed the takeover earlier this year of the town of Fallujah in western Anbar province, where U.S. troops fought some of their fiercest battles of the Iraq war in an effort to quell the insurgents.

Mosul, however, is a far more important city, the capital of northern Iraq and a key commercial and trading center. It had also been an important focus of the U.S. military’s effort to stabilize Iraq.
The capture of the airport, which had served as a major hub for the U.S. military, could not be independently confirmed, but Nujaifi said it had been seized and that all of the aircraft there also were captured.
Thousands of civilians had already fled Mosul after an initial assault Friday in which ISIS fighters captured a number of neighborhoods. But the government appeared to be holding its ground in the rest of the city, until late Monday.
Thousands more fled overnight, most of them seeking refuge in the nearby autonomous region of Kurdistan. Among them was the governor of Nineveh province, Atheel Nujaifi, who is the brother of the speaker of parliament. In a telephone call with the Al Jazeera television network, he described a “massive collapse” of the Iraqi security forces.
As the Iraqi security forces unraveled, the insurgents advanced and rapidly seized control of key facilities in the city, including two television stations, two prisons and several police headquarters, according to Iraqi news reports. The Twitter account of the Nineveh province branch of ISIS claimed that the group had seized large quantities of arms and ammunition from the fleeing security forces. It also said the prisoners at the facilities had been freed.
It was unclear whether ISIS fighters had managed to cross the Tigris River, which bisects the city, and were also threatening the eastern bank, which is mostly Kurdish. But it appeared clear that the western bank, which represents the original heart and commercial center of Mosul, was in insurgent hands.
There was no immediate response from the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, but Nujaifi said he had appealed to the government in Baghdad as well as the international community for support to retake the city.
“This will reach every corner of Iraq if it doesn’t stop,” he said. “We need a fast reaction to stop this terrorism.”
The capture of Mosul demonstrates that the insurgents now have the capacity to seize strategically vital territory, positioning them to threaten other important areas of Iraq, said Charles Lister of the Doha Brookings Center based in Qatar.
It also raises questions about the continued utility of sending U.S. military support to Maliki, whose security forces seem simply to have crumbled. Maliki is urging the United States to deliver more advanced weaponry, but ISIS fighters have already been seen riding round in U.S.-supplied Humvees in other areas they control, and much of the weaponry captured in this latest battle is likely to be American, Lister said.
“Washington will be questioning how to move forward in terms of supporting the Iraqi army in its fight against terrorism,” he said. “Every time ISIS captures territory, it’s a reminder that it does so using weapons that have fallen into the hands of the forces the U.S. is trying to counter in the first place.”
ISIS is an expanded and rebranded version of the al-Qaeda in Iraq organization that the U.S. military claimed it had tamed, though not defeated, ahead of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011.
ISIS has since significantly rebounded, aided in part by the rebellion in neighboring Syria, which created a vacuum of authority and enabled the militants to gain a foothold beyond Iraq’s borders.
It is now channeling its efforts toward the creation of an Islamic state modeled on the 7th century Islamic caliphate, the system of governance that prevailed after the death of the prophet Muhammad. Over the past year, ISIS has consolidated its hold on a swath of territory in Iraq and Syria that stretches from the eastern outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo to Fallujah west of Baghdad, where it has asserted authority by imposing a harsh version of Islamic law.
Mosul, located on the northeastern edge of the territory, is the group’s biggest prize to date, underscoring the extent to which its expansion has gone unchecked since the U.S. military left.
Earlier this year, the leader of ISIS, known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, publicly fell out with al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was harshly critical of some of the group’s extreme methods. Though no longer directly affiliated with al-Qaeda, however, the group shares essentially the same goal of establishing a global Islamic state.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z1

http://www.alipac.us/f9/barack-obama...-check-277412/

Police, Army Flee As Al-Qaida Group Seizes Iraq’s Second Largest City

June 10, 2014 by McClatchy-Tribune

ISTANBUL (MCT) — Iraqi police and army forces abandoned much of the northern city of Mosul Tuesday after fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria seized control of key government buildings late Monday night, leaving the central government’s control of northern Iraq in grave doubt.
Residents told local news outlets and wire services that hundreds, if not thousands, of ISIS fighters swarmed government facilities, military bases, prisons and media outlets on Tuesday, essentially taking complete control of northern Iraq’s most important city.
The speaker of Iraq’s parliament, Osama al Nujafi, released a statement Tuesday that said “terrorists” now controlled Mosul and called on the security forces to send reinforcements to retake the city.
Atheel al Nujafi, the speaker’s brother and governor of Nineveh Province, went on state television Monday night to call on “all the brave men of Mosul to take to the streets to defend their homes.” He then promptly fled the city for Baghdad, according to local media reports.
An Interior Ministry official admitted to the AFP wire service that security forces had discarded their uniforms and abandoned the city after key installations were overrun.
“The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants,” the official told AFP.
ISIS is a radical offspring of al-Qaida that has waged a brutal campaign in both Iraq and Syria to establish an Islamic state. Earlier this year, it seized much of the Iraqi province of Anbar as well as much of the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. It also controls much of eastern Syria, including the provincial capital of Raqqa.
A victory in Mosul, home to 2 million people, would provide both a major psychological victory and a fresh infusion of arms and manpower.
Iraqi provincial officials confirmed reports from ISIS media outlets that at least one major Iraqi military base had fallen and with it, huge amounts of American-supplied military equipment, including possible attack helicopters. ISIS-linked Internet accounts were filled with credible appearing photos of large amounts of captured and destroyed U.S.-built armored vehicles.
Local residents and ISIS linked media outlets reported that three jails filled with thousands of prisoners had fallen to the group, including a well-known special security facility for captured ISIS prisoners. A Twitter account associated with the group said that 1,150 men had been released from that facility, and local residents told the Iraqi media that men wearing prison uniforms had flooded the streets of the city Tuesday morning.
Multiple reports said hundreds of thousands of Mosul residents were fleeing the city for the safety of nearby Erbil, or further south to the city of Kirkuk. The reports could not be immediately confirmed.
–Mitchell Prothero
McClatchy Foreign Staff
___
(Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent.)
___
(c)2014 McClatchy Washington Bureau
Visit the McClatchy Washington Bureau at www.mcclatchydc.com.
Distributed by MCT Information Services.

http://personalliberty.com/police-ar...-largest-city/

Mosul falls to militants, Iraqi forces flee northern city

By Ziad al-Sinjary
MOSUL, Iraq Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:51pm EDT
70 Comments









1 of 4. Burning vehicles belonging to Iraqi security forces are seen during clashes between Iraqi security forces and al Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the northern Iraq city of Mosul, June 10, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Stringer

Insurgents capture Mosul

Al Qaeda-linked insurgents capture Iraq's second largest city. Slideshow

(Reuters) - An al Qaeda splinter group seized control of the Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday, putting security forces to flight in a spectacular show of strength against the Shi'ite-led Baghdad government.
The capture of the northern city of 2 million by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - Sunni Muslims waging sectarian war on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian frontier - complements ISIL's grip on key western towns and followed four days of heavy fighting in Mosul and the border province of Nineveh around it.
The United States, which pulled out its troops two and a half years ago, pledged to help Iraqi leaders "push back against this aggression" as the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked parliament to declare a state of emergency that would give him extraordinary powers to tackle the crisis.
But the battle, for the time being, seemed to be over. Some police were discarding uniforms and weapons and fleeing a city where the black flag of ISIL now flew over government buildings.
"We have lost Mosul this morning," said a colonel at a local military command center. "Army and police forces left their positions and ISIL terrorists are in full control.
"It’s a total collapse of the security forces."
A Reuters reporter saw the bodies of soldiers and policemen, some of them mutilated, littering the streets.
"We can't beat them. We can't," one officer told Reuters. "They are well trained in street fighting and we're not. We need a whole army to drive them out of Mosul.
"They're like ghosts: they appear, strike and disappear in seconds."
The fall of Mosul, a largely Sunni Arab city after years of ethnic and sectarian fighting, deals a serious blow to Baghdad's efforts to fight Sunni militants who have regained ground and momentum in Iraq over the past year, taking Falluja and parts of Ramadi in the desert west of Baghdad at the start of the year.
Control there, in Anbar province, as well as around Mosul in the north, would help ISIL and its allies consolidate control along the barely populated frontier with Syria, where they are fighting President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Shi'ite Iran.
A White House spokesman renewed U.S. calls for Maliki to do more to address grievances among Iraqis, notably the once dominant Sunni minority. Many Sunnis feel disenfranchised and some have made common cause with foreign Islamist radicals, first against the U.S. troops that overthrew Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 and now Shi'ite-led Iraqi forces.
MOSUL IS "HELL"
Thousands of families were fleeing north from Mosul, one of the great historic cities of the Middle East, towards the nearby Kurdistan region, where Iraq's ethnic Kurds have autonomy and their own large and disciplined military force, the Peshmerga.
"Mosul now is like hell. It’s in flames and death is everywhere," said Amina Ibrahim, who was leaving with her children. Her husband had been killed last year, in a bombing.
In a statement, the U.S. State Department said it was "deeply concerned" and had senior officials in Baghdad and Washington monitoring events in coordination with the Iraqi government, Kurdish officials and other Iraqi figures. It said Washington would "support a strong, coordinated response".
"The United States will provide all appropriate assistance to the government of Iraq," it added, saying that its use of arms and fighters from Syria showed "ISIL is not only a threat to the stability of Iraq, but a threat to the entire region".
Some officials in Baghdad spoke of seeking help for Mosul from Kurdish Peshmerga, which have long been a force in the jockeying between Shi'ites, Kurds and Sunnis for influence and, especially, for control of oilfields in the north of Iraq.
A Peshmerga spokesman said some Kurdish troops were helping Iraqi forces guard the Syrian border crossing at Rabia.
President Barack Obama has been criticised by some at home for neglecting Iraq and letting U.S. adversary Iran extend its influence there. Washington has stepped up the supply of arms, however, notably since the rise of Islamist rebels in Syria led to a new impetus for Maliki's Sunni enemies in Iraq.
However, Iraqi police, military and security officials told Reuters the insurgents, armed with anti-aircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, had taken over almost all police and army checkpoints in and around Mosul early on Tuesday.
Two army officers said security forces had received orders to quit Mosul after militants captured the Ghizlani army base and set more than 200 inmates free from a high-security prison.
Two police sources and a local government official said the militants had also broken into another jail called Badush, allowing more than 1,000 prisoners to escape. Most of these, they said, belonged to ISIL and al Qaeda. The army and police set fire to fuel and ammunition depots as they retreated to prevent the militants from using them, the officers said.
Further south, at Hawija in Kirkuk province, the head of the local council, Hussein Ali al-Saleh, said scores of Islamist militants drove into town, putting troops and police to flight.
ISIL, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, broke with al Qaeda's international leader, Osama bin Laden's former lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri, and has clashed with al Qaeda fighters in Syria.
ISIL posted photographs of its fighters wearing black balaclavas on its "Nineveh State" Twitter account, interspersed with verses from the Koran. The group dubbed the Mosul offensive "Enter Upon Them Through The Gates".
In a newsletter, ISIL enjoined Sunnis to join them in the fight against Maliki's "Safavid" army - a reference to the Persian dynasty that promoted Shi'ite Islam.
"Join the ranks oh brothers!" ran one slogan. "Maliki's tyrannical strength no match for pious believers."
"EVEN THE DEAD SUFFER"
Ibraheem al-Sumeide'i, a former adviser to Maliki who fell out with him over policy, said the prime minister should make way for a government of national unity: "The fall of Mosul into the hands of ISIL means that ISIL has unified the Iraqi and Syrian front and they have achieved their goal," he said.
Some Iraqi security sources estimate more than a thousand mainly Shi'ite troops have been killed and many more deserted from the army, as regular soldiers complain their leadership has not provided them with the equipment and training.
Militants also control the Qayara district near Mosul, where there is a military base and an airfield, security sources said.
In the neighboring province of Salahaddin, they overran three villages in the Shirqat district, torching police stations, town halls and local council buildings before raising ISIL's banner. Over loudspeakers, insurgents said residents - and the police - would be safe if they remained in their homes.
On Monday, Nineveh provincial governor Atheel Nujaifi made a televised plea to the people of Mosul to stand their ground and fight. Hours later, Nujaifi himself narrowly escaped the provincial headquarters in the city after militants besieged it.
Nujaifi's brother Osama, who is speaker of the parliament in Baghdad, called on the Kurdish leadership to sent their Peshmerga forces to Mosul and wrest it back from "terrorists".
Kurdistan Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani said his region had tried to coordinate with Iraqi federal authorities to protect Mosul, but Baghdad's stance had made it impossible.
Nearly 800 people were killed in violence across Iraq in May - the highest monthly death toll so far this year. Last year was the deadliest since the sectarian bloodletting of 2006-07.
At least 20 people were killed on Tuesday when two bombs exploded at a cemetery in the city of Baquba about 50 km (30 miles) northeast of Baghdad, as mourners buried a university professor shot dead the previous day, police and medics said.
“Mourners' bodies were flung among the graves by the force of the blasts," said Muhsin Farhan, a relative of the professor.
"Even the dead are suffering in Iraq."
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed, Raheem Salman and Isra al-Rubei'i in Baghdad; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Samia Nakhoul, Giles Elgood and Alastair Macdonald)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0EL1H520140610

Freedom Outpost

The Middle East Powder Keg Ignites In Mosul, Iraq - Islamic Jihadists Take Control : Freedom Outpost http://ow.ly/xTV73



The Middle East Powder Keg Ignites In Mosul, Iraq - Islamic Jihadists Take Control

Chris Carrington 5 hours ago
5 Comments

As many as 500,000 people have been forced to flee the Iraqi city of Mosul after Islamist militants effectively took control of it, the International Organization for Migration says.
ISIL- The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is an off-shoot of al Qaeda and it now controls eastern Syria as well as west and central Iraq. Residents of Mosul – Iraq’s second city – said jihadist flags were flying from buildings and that the militants had announced over loudspeakers they had “come to liberate” the city.

Many police stations were reported to have been set on fire and hundreds of detainees set free.

“The army forces threw away their weapons, changed their clothes, abandoned their vehicles and left the city,” Mahmud Nuri, a resident fleeing Mosul, told the AFP news agency.

US State department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the situation in Mosul was “extremely serious” and that the US supported “a strong, co-ordinated response to push back against this aggression”. A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was “gravely concerned” at the situation.The Iraqi government is struggling with a surge in sectarian violence that killed almost 800 people, including 603 civilians, in May alone, according to the UN. Last year, more than 8,860 people died.



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http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/06/mi...-take-control/

Jihadists capture Iraqi cities one-by-one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=SMH7A5isqHE

Jihadists in Iraq continued their offensive Wednesday, capturing Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. With a population of nearly 260,000, the takeover of the city represents another victory for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Tuesday, the insurgent group captured Mosul, the second largest city in the war-torn country. RT's Ameera David discusses the fragile political and security situation in Iraq as well the latest on the Blackwater trial with retired Marine and political researcher Jake Diliberto.

IRAQ ANARCHY SPIRAL

WAR GAINS LOST




Washington Watches As Iraq Speeds Toward Disaster...

'Mass beheadings' by al-Qaeda forces in Mosul and Tikrit...

PM Asks USA for Strikes...

Secret Request Rebuffed...

Governemt on brink of collapse...

Militants Sweeping Toward Baghdad...


http://drudgereport.com/

10 Little-Known Things Just Happened In Iraq Blasting Obama’s Narrative That Al-Qaeda Is On The Run

14,044 Shares By Justen Charters 18 hours ago



Conditions in the Middle East are continuing to destabilize. In the last two days, ISIS, a merger of terrorist organizations Al-Qaeda and Jabhat-Al-Nusra, seized the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit.

Their spoils included 500 billion Iraqi Dinaris (429 million USD) which makes ISIS the wealthiest terror group in the world.



During their invasion, Iraqi military abandoned their posts. Here, you can see their uniforms strewn across the highway.



Then, an ISIS commander took a selfie with a captured U.S. military Humvee.



Next, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi citizens fled in fear.



Desperate, the Iraqi government asked for U.S. airstrike support. But Obama said:



So the Al-Qaeda conglomerate started removing the border between Syria and Iraq. Because their goal is to establish an Islamic superstate.



And the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is preparing plans for a possible evacuation like:



In the event that 429 million does not meet their terror funding needs, the group is also closing in on Iraq’s largest oil refinery.



If that wasn’t bad enough already, a radio transmission came in today from an ISIS spokesperson declaring: “the battle will rage in Baghdad and Karbala … put on your belts and get ready.”



Now Al-Qaeda has more territory and potential resources than ever before.



So conditions in the Middle East were previously fragile, but today they’re like your grandmother’s China cabinet, tossed off the Empire State Building.

President Obama could not be more wrong with his statement that Al-Qaeda is on the run. For all intents and purposes, it appears that Al-Qaeda is the one running the show.

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/06/1466...just-two-days/

What do you think about the disintegration of Iraq and the possibility of its takeover by Al-Qaeda affiliated forces?



HARD TRUTH: Newt Gingrich Nails Obama On Iraq With One Devastating Point - [SEE HERE]
Iraq was on the brink of disintegration as al-Qaeda-inspired fighters swept...
thefederalistpapers.org

Newt Gingrich Nails Obama On Iraq With One Devastating Point

By Steve Straub On June 12, 2014 · 201 Comments · In US





Iraq is disintegrating, as The Washington Post reports:

Iraq was on the brink of disintegration Thursday as al-Qaeda-inspired fighters swept through northern Iraq toward Baghdad and Kurdish soldiers seized the city of Kirkuk without a fight.
Lawmakers gathered at the Iraqi parliament to discuss the declaration of a state of emergency, a day after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki assured Iraqis that the insurgents’ gains were temporary and would soon be reversed by the Iraqi army.
But after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) captured fresh territory and set its sights on Baghdad, Iraq seemed to be fast slipping out of government control.

Newt Gingrich, as usual, nails it!

Newt Gingrich ✔ @newtgingrich Follow
Obama was right. Al Queada IS on the run…straight into Baghdad.
9:11 AM - 12 Jun 2014


Here’s a map that shows how quickly Iraq is crumbling and falling under the control of Al-Qaeda affiliated ISIS:

Dan McLaughlin @baseballcrank Follow

Long War Journal's map of ISIS (Al Qaeda) conquests in Iraq & Syria is deeply disturbing. http://bit.ly/1ubJmK5
10:26 AM - 12 Jun 2014
Iraqi and Syrian Towns and Cities seized by the Islamic State of Iraq...




Al Qaeda is not so much on the run these days:

Cameron Gray ✔ @Cameron_Gray Follow
I’m old enough to remember when Obama said al Qaeda was “on the run” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39_MDzf7zPM … cc: #ISIS #Iraq #Tikrit #Mosul
3:24 PM - 11 Jun 2014






Finally John Nolte drives the nail into the coffin for Obama’s leadership on Iraq:

John Nolte @NolteNC Follow

OBAMA: Al Qaeda is decimated.
ROMNEY: Uh, no it's not.
OBAMA's MEDIA: Romney's a liar!!!
AL QAEDA: Thanks for Iraq & Syria!

7:41 AM - 12 Jun 2014



What do you think about the disintegration of Iraq and the possibility of its takeover by Al-Qaeda affiliated forces?


H/T Twitchy

http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/u...astating-point