Britain stands ready to take "whatever steps are necessary" to help an international push to destroy the "evil" extremist group who murdered a British aid worker, David Cameron said.

Obama is allowing himself to be drawn back into Iraq mostly because he doesn’t know what else to do, says Andrew J Bacevich

A government TD has criticised a film organisation for distributing leaflets which depict a man about to get his throat cut.

US President Barack Obama has pledged to continue attacking the group responsible for the death of journalist James Foley, despite its threats to kill another American hostage.

Hopes for the quick formation of a new Iraqi government have been dashed after the first session of parliament failed to make progress.

The al Qaida breakaway group that has seized much of Syria and Iraq has formally declared the establishment of a new Islamic state.

The al-Qaida breakaway group that has seized much of north-eastern Syria and huge tracts of Iraq formally declared the establishment of a new Islamic state.

Iraqi forces backed by tanks and helicopter gunships are battling insurgents in Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, one of two major cities seized by Sunni militants during a rapid advance across the north earlier this month.

Up to 7,000 people, mostly rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad, have been killed in in-fighting among rival Islamic groups across the opposition-held territory in the north, activists said.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric yesterday stepped up the pressure on politicians to agree on Iraq’s next prime minister, after incumbent Nouri al-Maliki lost the confidence of former allies in the fight against Sunni militants.

Nearly half of the roughly 300 US military advisers and special operations forces expected to go to Iraq are now in Baghdad.

A car bomb has exploded in the central Syrian city of Homs, killing one person and wounding at least 14 in the latest blast to hit the city in recent weeks, Syrian media and an activist group said.

At least 1,075 people have been killed in Iraq during June, most of them civilians, according to United Nations human rights monitors.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Iraq’s top Shi’ite leaders to give more government power to political opponents before a Sunni insurgency seizes more control across the country and sweeps away hopes of lasting peace.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged Iraq’s top Shiite leaders to give more government power to political opponents before a Sunni insurgency seizes more control across the country and sweeps away hopes of lasting peace.

Sunni militants have blitzed through the vast desert of western Iraq, capturing four towns and three border crossings and deepening the predicament of the Shiite-led government in Baghdad led by Nouri Maliki.

Sunni fighters led by an al-Qaeda breakaway group expanded their offensive in a volatile western province, capturing three strategic towns and the first border crossing with Syria to fall on the Iraqi side.

Sixteen people, including three civilians, have been killed in air strikes by the Syrian army against an eastern town which was captured by fighters from an al Qaida breakaway group a day earlier, according to activists.

President Barack Obama said he was sending up to 300 US military advisers to Iraq but stressed the need for a political solution to the country’s crisis, as government forces battled Sunni rebels for control of the country’s biggest refinery.

Around 150 Australians are fighting with militants in Syria and Iraq, raising fears of a terrorist threat if they return home.

Iraq has asked the US for air support in countering Sunni rebels, the top US general said last night, after the militants seized major cities in a lightning advance that has routed the Shi’ite-led government’s army.

Islamic militants have attacked Iraq’s largest oil refinery, 155 miles north of the capital Baghdad, security chiefs say.

Barack Obama is not expected to approve imminent air strikes in Iraq, partly because there are few clear targets that could blunt the fast-moving uprising, US officials have said.

Signs emerged of a reprisal sectarian slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq, as police said pro-government Shi’ite militiamen killed nearly four dozen detainees after insurgents tried to storm a jail and free them north-east of Baghdad.

A car bomb has exploded in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq, killing at least five people including a local rebel commander, activists say.

America is deploying up to 275 troops to Iraq to protect the US embassy and other interests and is considering sending special forces soldiers as the country struggles to repel a rampant uprising.

The Obama administration is willing to talk with Iran over deteriorating security conditions in Iraq and is not ruling out potential US-Iranian military co-operation in stemming the advance of Sunni extremists, Secretary of State John Kerry said.

Sunni militants have captured the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar, close to the Syrian border, the mayor and residents said today.

As the Iraqi government bolstered Baghdad’s defences yesterday, the Islamic militant group that captured two major cities last week posted graphic photos that appeared to show its fighters massacring dozens of Iraqi soldiers.

Washington cannot sit back and allow Iraq to be overrun by a terrorist group that is capable of and willing to launch attacks on the US, writes Anja Manuel.

The United States has ordered an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf as it laid out specific ways for Iraq to show it is united in order to gain assistance in its fight against Islamic insurgents.

Barack Obama has vowed that the United States will not be “dragged back” into military action in Iraq as long as leaders in Baghdad refuse to reform a political system that has left the county vulnerable to a fast-moving Islamic insurgency.

Militants who seized large areas of Iraq’s Sunni heartland with lightning advances this week have pushed into an ethnically mixed province and captured two towns north east of Baghdad, officials said.

Islamic militants have vowed to march on Baghdad to settle old scores after seizing a number of cities and towns in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton has defended her initial opposition to gay marriage, denying in a radio interview that political reasons were behind her shift last year to supporting same-sex unions.

Barack Obama threatened US military strikes in Iraq yesterday against Sunni Islamist militants who have surged out of the north to menace Baghdad and want to establish their own state in Iraq and Syria.

Al-Qaida-inspired militants have pushed deeper into Iraq’s Sunni heartland, conquering Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit as soldiers and security forces yielded ground once controlled by US forces.

Al-Qaeda-inspired militants seized effective control of Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, expanding their offensive closer to the Iraqi capital as mass beheadings were being reported.

Al Qaida-inspired militants have seized control of Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit.

The governor of an Iraqi province overrun with militants says authorities are determined to recapture the northern city of Mosul after large parts of it were seized by Islamist insurgents.

The United States has condemned a siege of Iraq’s second-largest city by Islamic militants “in the strongest possible terms.”

Syrian president Bashar Assad has declared a general amnesty for prisoners in the country, state media reported.

A series of car bombs exploded across Iraq’s capital tonight, killing at least 52 people in a day of violence that saw militants storm a university in the country’s restive Anbar province and take dozens hostage, authorities said.

A Frenchman arrested over killings at a Belgian Jewish museum had travelled to Syria and claimed responsibility for the shootings in a video, prosecutors said today.