Baghdad: Iraqi helicopters fired on a university campus in Tikrit on Friday to dislodge insurgents who overran the city in an onslaught that has given them control of most majority Sunni regions and brought them close to Baghdad.
Tikrit, the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussain, fell a fortnight ago to Sunnis led by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil), which split from Al Qaida.
Iraqi forces launched an airborne assault on Tikrit on Thursday, flying commandos into a stadium in helicopters, at least one of which crashed after coming under fire from insurgents.
“My family and I left early this morning. We could hear gunfire and helicopters are striking the area,” said Farhan Ebrahim Tamimi, a professor at the university who fled Tikrit for a nearby town.
Iraq’s million-strong army, trained and equipped by the United States, largely evaporated in the north after the Sunni fighters led by Isil launched their assault with the capture of the north’s biggest city Mosul on June 10.
Isil emerged after Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the leader a group then called the Islamic State in Iraq, defied the Al Qaida leadership by moving into neighbouring Syria more than a year ago to join the civil war against President Bashar Al Assad.
The group is now fighting in both Iraq and Syria, seeking to erase the frontiers and create an Islamic caliphate stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq.
In Iraq, the fighters have been halted about an hour’s drive north of Baghdad and on its western outskirts. However, they have pressed on with their advances in areas including the religiously mixed Diyala province and are consolidating their gains in northwestern Iraq.
Militants took control of six villages populated by the country’s Shiite Shabak minority southeast of Mosul after clashing with Kurdish “peshmerga” forces who secure the area, according to a lawmaker and Shabak leader.
A new Iraqi parliament elected two months ago is set to meet on Tuesday to begin the process of forming a government that the United States and other countries hope will be inclusive enough to blunt the insurgency.
Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s Shiite-led State of Law coalition won the most seats in the April election but needs allies to form a cabinet.
Al Maliki confirmed last week that he would abide by the constitutional deadlines to set up a new government, after pressure from US Secretary of State John Kerry, who flew to Baghdad for crisis talks earlier this week.
Under the official schedule, parliament will have 30 days from when it first meets on Tuesday to name a president and 15 days after that to name a prime minister.
In the past the process has dragged out, taking nine months to seat the government in 2010. Any delays would allow Maliki to continue to serve as caretaker.
The 64-year-old Shiite Islamist is fighting for his political life in the face of an assault that threatens to dismember his country. Sunni, Kurdish and rival Shiite groups have demanded he leave office, and some ruling party members have suggested he could be replaced with a less polarising figure, although close allies say he has no plan to step aside.
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