500,000 civilians fled unrest in Iraq's Mosul



  
 Written : Mohamed Abdel fattah

Jun 11, 2014

 More than 500,000 citizens fled in fear after on Tuesday, Sunni extremists formerly allied with Al-Qaeda captured Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, leading to mass evacuations of residents.

The International Organization for Migration reports 500,000 people have left their homes since Saturday — and there were reports that water and electricity were cut off.

Iraq's prime minister Nouri Maliki asked parliament to declare a state of emergency in the country, and the region's governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi, asked the city's residents to "stand firm in their areas and to defend them against the strangers.
Iraqi soldiers threw down their guns and stripped off their uniforms as the insurgents approached on Tuesday, the New York Times reported.

“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,” Osama Nuajaifi, the speaker of Iraq’s parliament who hails from Mosul, said during a news conference in Baghdad.

“Everything is fallen. It’s a crisis. Having these terrorist groups control a city in the heart of Iraq threatens not only Iraq but the entire region.

On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered that all military leadership who fled be court-martialed.

ISIL originated as an Iraq-based affiliate of al Qaeda, which is fighting to set up an Islamic state in parts of Iraq and Syria,has expand its influence by advancing into the oil-refinery town of Baiji

Mosul, which has a population of almost two million, is also the main export route for Iraq's oil.

The United States on Tuesday condemned the seizure of the Iraqi city of Mosul by Sunni Islamist insurgents, calling the situation "extremely serious" and urging fractious political groups to fight Iraq's enemies together.

Accordiung to Reuters , the United States has supplied large amounts of weaponry to the Iraqi government since pulling its forces out in 2011,the arms included 300 Hellfire missiles, small arms and tank ammunition, helicopter-fired rockets, machineguns and rifles .

also delivered Bell IA-407 helicopters late last year, and surveillance equipment is on schedule for delivery this summer. There is also a proposed agreement to sell Apache attack helicopters to Iraq, but Baghdad has failed to heal festering sectarian and political divisions

Sources

Al.aljazeera

Reuters

news4jax.com

Time

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