Militants Take Key Iraqi City in Challenge To Baghdad

摘要

Devastating assaults by extremist militants in Iraq have exposed the deterioration of the security situation in the country, with a major city, Iraq's biggest oil refinery and the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein all falling out of government control. Militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a group so extreme that it has been disowned by al-Qaeda, seized Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, on June 10 after just four days of fighting. According to officials, Iraqi soldiers threw down their guns and stripped off their uniforms as the insurgents made their final approach. Soon, ISIS had extended its control to the Baiji oil refinery, the country's largest. On June 11 came news that the militants had also seized Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace, less than 100 miles north of the capital, Baghdad. Along the way, the predominately Sunni Muslim militants were reported to have looted banks and captured arms and military equipment, some of it American-made and intended for Iraqi security forces.