ISIL takes more Turkish drivers hostage in northern Iraq as 500,000 flee Mosul

The number of Turkish truck drivers taken hostage by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in northern Iraq has risen from 28 to 32 on June 11. Islamist militants continue their offensive one day after they effectively took control of Mosul, the country's second-largest city as reports said that fighting resulted in a high number of casualties, with half a million people displaced.

Officials in Suleiman Bek town in Saladin province said that scores of ISIL militants had poured in as police forces abandoned their posts, Anadolu Agency reported. Iraqi security sources who spoke to Reuters, on the other hand, told that Sunni militants have pushed into Iraqi town of Baiji, which is the site of a major oil refinery.

Taleb al-Biati, a local official, told Anadolu Agency that an unspecified number of policemen were killed and injured in clashes with the militants near the road connecting Baghdad and Kirkuk, which is another oil-rich town in the north.

A police commander in the nearby Tuz Khormato town, also in Saladin, said that enforcements of Kurdish peshmerga forces were deployed to defend the town against any possible attack by ISIL gunmen.

Meanwhile, the International Organisation for Migration said around
half a million Iraqis had fled their homes in Mosul following the city's fall, fearing increased violence.

The Geneva-based
organisation said its sources on the ground estimated the violence
leading up to ISIL's total takeover "displaced over 500,000 people in
and around the city."

The violence in Mosul "has resulted in a high number of casualties among civilians," the IOM added.

Gül concerned about power vacuums

Commenting on the crisis, Turkish President Abdullah Gül said...