Politics of Iraq

A news photographer was killed while covering fighting between Kurdish security forces and jihadists in northern Iraq on June 12, medical and security sources said.

Militants gained more ground in
Iraq overnight, moving into two towns in the eastern province of Diyala
after security forces abandoned their posts.

Security sources
said the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla had fallen to the insurgents, as
well as several other villages around the Himreen mountains, which have
long been a hideout for militants.

There are hopes that the Turks taken hostage by the organization of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), which captured Iraq’s second biggest city Mosul on June 9, will be soon released.

Intense contacts were carried out on June 12 by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the National Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T) to secure the release.

The march of extremist Islamist fighters on Baghdad and the tearing down of border posts between Iraq and Syria surprise us with their speed. We are not used to seeing such changes on the map, as the years after World War II were devoted to avoiding any change of borders.

The Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry is watching the general developments in Iraq with deep worry and voices concern at the significant deterioration of the security climate, in the northwestern regions mostly, a release to AGERPRES says on Thursday.

Iraqi Kurds seized control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk on June 12, while surging Sunni Islamist rebels advanced towards Baghdad, as the central government's army abandoned its posts in a rapid collapse that has lost it control of the north.

The fall of Mosul into the hands of Islamist militants, led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), has the potential to ignite a region-wide war, with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announcing that its militants are ready to fight the Islamists together with the peshmerga.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has defended Ankara's
decision to keep its consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul open despite
the approach of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants.

49 Turkish employees, including Turkey's consul general, have been kidnapped by the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Soldiers from Turkish Special Forces and children of diplomats are reportedly among the hostages

Islamist militants seized the Turkish consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul on June 11 and kidnapped the head of the diplomatic mission and 24 staff members, a police colonel said.

"ISIL members managed to kidnap the Turkish consul and 24 of his guards and assistants," the officer said, referring to powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), AFP reported.