Iran Vows to Protect Holy Shi'ite Shrines in Iraq



 Written : Mohamed Abdel fattah

Jun 18, 2014

 Sunni militants captured a key northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar along the highway to Syria early on Monday, after a two-day battle with security forces – the third major centre to fall to the insurgents in less than a week.

Tal Afar is a city of 200,000 with an ethnic mix of Shiite and Sunni Turkomen, was overrun by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, after heavy clashes with Iraqi army units and Turkmen tribal fighters, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia news agency.

Tal Afar is a short drive west from Mosul, the north's main city, which [ISIS] seized last week,and seized Tikrit, Saddam Hussein ’s hometown. Better equipped and numerically superior Iraqi army and police units abandoned their posts and fled.

Tal Afar is only 93 miles from the border with Syria, where ISIS is fighting against President Bashar Assad's government and controls territory abutting the Iraqi border.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki,vowed to recapture lost territory and drive out the attackers.

"This black conspiracy that was woven in Mosul -- we must dye it with the blood of the traitors," he said in a fiery speech at an army headquarters in Baghdad on Sunday night, hours before Tal Afar fell. "The defeat ... will not continue, and there is a sea of men marching to put an end to this."

The U.S. State Department announced Sunday it was evacuating some staff out of its embassy in Baghdad. A majority of the staff, however, will remain in place, the State Department said

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry  said on Monday that Washington was "open to discussions" with Tehran about the military offensive by extremist Sunnis in Iraq. Mr. Kerry said he would "not rule out" possible military cooperation with Iran. But the Pentagon later said it had no intention of coordinating a military response with Iran or its military forces.

Isis 's claim to have killed 1,700 of the men remains unverified, although photographs and videos of at least 50 being executed as they lay face down in the sand with their hands tied have been verified.

Sources

latimes

online.wsj.com/

theguardian.

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