Islamic State takes over two towns and now ‘controls Mosul Dam’

The Islamic State has carved out a self-styled caliphate in a large area straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border. AP Photo / January 4, 2014.

BAGHDAD // The Islamic State took over Iraq’s biggest dam yesterday, witnesses said, while gaining control of two Kurdish towns and an oilfield.

If the take over of the dam is confirmed, it would sharply raise the stakes in the groups’ bid to topple the Baghdad government. Control of the dam could give it the ability to flood major cities.

The gains by the Sunni militants have forced thousands of residents to flee from the religiously mixed towns of Zumar and Sinjar, towards the northern self-ruled Kurdish region, the UN said.

Some were trapped in an open rugged area.

The Mosul governor Atheel Al Nujaifi, who fled to the largely autonomous Kurdish region when the Islamic State and allied Sunni militants seized Mosul in June, said the two towns fell after fierce clashes that erupted the day before.

A resident in Sinjar said the militants blew up a small revered Shiite site and two Yazidi shrines. Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking sect and religious minority.

Another resident in Zumar said they took over at least two small oilfields.

The UN mission in Iraq, known as Unami, said as many as 200,000 civilians, mostly Yazidis, have fled to a nearby mountain but were surrounded by militants.

Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of US troops. The Islamic State, an Al Qaeda breakaway group, captured large swathes of land in the country’s west and north in an offensive this year.

When it overran Mosul and Tikrit in June, Iraqi security forces collapsed. In most cases, police and soldiers simply ran, abandoning arsenals of heavy weapons.

The Islamic State has carved out a self-styled caliphate in a large area straddling the Iraqi-Syrian border.

In the early days of the offensive, the Kurdish fighters did not fight them but instead pushed into disputed areas with majority Kurdish population to protect them. But, they found themselves fighting the militants across the northern fronts from time to time.

The US special envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said Kurds and the federal government “should urgently restore their security cooperation in dealing with the crisis”.

An Iraqi military spokesman said clashes continued between Iraqi security forces and militants to retake the town of Jurf Al Sakhar, which fell to Sunni insurgents last week.

A number of airstrikes hit the militants in the centre of the town, though he did not offer casualty figures.

* Reuters with additional reporting by the Associated Press