The unfolding debacle in Iraq has set off a furious — and drearily predictable — partisan dispute in Washington over who was more to blame: George W Bush or Barack Obama, writes Bill Powell

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 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.

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.

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.

President Barack Obama has said the US is prepared to take targeted military action in Iraq if it would help fight a growing threat from extremist militants.

The right of people to choose their own governments is running into trouble. The unrest sweeping many nations shows democracy being overwhelmed by despotism and despair, writes Nicholas Wapshott

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.

Iraq’s Shi’ite clerical leadership yesterday called on all Iraqis to defend the country from Sunni militants who have seized large swaths of territory, and a UN official expressed "extreme alarm" at reprisal killings in the offensive, citing reports of hundreds of dead and wounded.

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.

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

Iraqis began voting in key elections for a new parliament as the country slides deeper into violence more than two years after US forces left.

A new wave of bombings has caused carnage in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, killing at least 20 people.

A senior Iraqi military commander has said it will take a few days to fully dislodge al-Qaida-linked fighters from two key western cities.

AS 2014 begins, there is no more important question in world diplomacy than this: Has Iran changed?

THE date most closely associated with the Secret Service isn’t its founding, in 1865. It’s not 1902, when it assumed full-time protection of the president, following William McKinley’s assassination.

Iraq’s prime minister has warned that weapons and fighters flowing into Syria are now making their way to Iraq, as a rising tide of violence sweeps across the country.

A wave of car bombs in Baghdad has killed 32 people and wounded dozens, the latest attacks in a months-long surge in violence.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again dismissed street protests against his rule as organised by extremists, described them as a temporary blip and angrily rejected comparisons with the Arab Spring uprisings.

Two car bombs have exploded in sprawling Shiite neighbourhoods of the Iraqi capital killing at least 12 civilians and wounding 30, officials said.

Iraqis braved the fear of violence today to vote in the first election since the US military withdrawal, though delayed voting in some parts of the country and an apparently lacklustre turnout elsewhere has cast doubt about the credibility of the vote.

Insurgents in Iraq detonated a series of car bombs across Iraq today as co-ordinated attacks killed at least 55 people on the deadliest day in nearly a month.

A series of car bombs exploded within minutes of each other as Iraqis were out shopping in and around Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 35 people in mainly Shiite areas.

A series of car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in and around Baghdad today, killing at least 28 people and wounding dozens in overwhelmingly Shiite areas.

Militants have issued death threats against employees of Iraq’s election commission, raising concerns about security ahead of the upcoming provincial balloting, officials said.

A car bomb explosion tore through a crowd of Shiite pilgrims returning home from a religious commemoration in Iraq killing at least 20, officials said.

The US president will not succeed abroad by trying to avoid the worst rather than achieve the best, says Zaki Laidi

Iraq's fugitive vice president has declared his "absolute innocence" and rejected the terror trial that sentenced him to death on charges of masterminding the murder of rivals.

The Pentagon’s top general has finished talks in Baghdad with senior Iraqi officials about ways the US might help plug gaps in Iraq’s security.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff met with Iraqi officials today in the first such visit by America’s top general since troops withdrew from the country in December.

Gunmen singled out seven Shiite Muslims and shot them in Iraq’s north while they were out swimming in a targeted sectarian attack, officials said today.

Syrian president Bashar Assad has agreed to a new UN-brokered peace plan focusing on containing the most violent areas of the country, then expanding to the entire nation, international envoy Kofi Annan said.

Bombings and shootings around Iraq killed 22 people and wounded more than 50 today, authorities said.

Iraq has suspended plans to close 44 media operations in the country, including the BBC and Voice of America, after an outcry by press freedom campaigners.

At least 25 people have been killed after two car bombings hit a religious procession in the Iraqi capital.

A wave of car bombings targeting Shia pilgrims has killed at least 65 people and wounded another 200 in several cities across Iraq, in one of the deadliest attacks since US troops withdrew from the country.

Co-ordinated car bombings targeting Shiite pilgrims in four Iraqi cities killed at least 56 people today in the latest wave of sectarian-fuelled violence, officials said.