German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier believes changing the way we live in fear of terrorist attacks would be giving them exactly what they wanted

Iraqi forces claim that they are in full control of the city of Ramadi, recapturing it from Islamic State fighters.

Iraqi forces yesterday took control of the government complex in central Ramadi, the last Islamic State stronghold in the western city, a military spokesman said.

Armed forces storm into heart of militant stronghold city of Ramadi

A video released by the Islamic State group yesterday appears to show the killing of two different groups of captured Ethiopian Christians by the extremist group’s Libyan affiliates.

Iraqi officials say they believe government forces have killed the last remaining Saddam Hussein henchman on the run in Iraq.

Iraqi forensic teams in the newly-recaptured city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain some of the hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State (IS) militants last year, a government spokesman said yesterday.

Forensic teams in the newly liberated city of Tikrit have started exhuming bodies from mass graves believed to contain hundreds of soldiers killed by Islamic State militants last year.

At Iraq’s request, the US began airstrikes in Tikrit in support of a stalled Iraqi ground offensive to retake the city from Islamic State fighters.

The US-led coalition has begun surveillance flights over the Islamic State-held city of Tikrit and offering intelligence to the Iraqi forces trying to take it, an official has revealed.

Islamic State militants have accepted a pledge of allegiance by the Nigerian-grown Boko Haram extremist group, a spokesman for IS has said.

A man and a boy featured in a chilling IS propaganda video showing the killing of a Palestinian have been identified as French citizens.

UNESCO appeals to global community to protect heritage

Iraqi troops and Shia militias battled IS yesterday south of the militant-held city of Tikrit, though roadside bombs and suicide attacks slowed their advance on Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Iraq’s armed forces, backed by Shi’ite militia, attacked Islamic State (IS) strongholds north of Baghdad yesterday as they launched an offensive to retake the city of Tikrit and the surrounding Sunni Muslim province of Salahuddin.

A large-scale military operation to recapture Saddam Hussein’s home town from the Islamic State extremist group has begun, Iraq’s state TV says.

Islamic State militants carried out a mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi prison inmates when they seized the country’s second-largest city of Mosul in June, according to an international rights group.

A journalist from a local television network in Iraq has been killed by the Islamic State group.

Islamic State insurgents in Iraq have carried out mass executions, abducted women and girls as sex slaves, and used child soldiers in what may amount to systematic war crimes, the UN said.

French jets struck a suspected Islamic State target in Iraq for the first time, expanding a US-led military campaign against militants who have seized a third of the country and also control large parts of neighbouring Syria.

David Cameron has insisted Britain will refuse to pay ransoms to terrorists in return for the release of hostages, as Islamic State (IS) militants threaten a Briton’s life.

Militants from the Islamic State (IS) group carried out a mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers captured when the extremists overran a military base north of Baghdad in June, a leading international watchdog has said.

Aid has begun to flow to a small northern Shiite town in Iraq, a day after security forces backed by Iran-allied Shiite militias and US airstrikes broke a two-month siege by Sunni militants.

At least 11 people were killed and 31 others injured when a car bomb exploded in a busy Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, Iraqi officials said.

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic minority during their offensive in the north, Iraq’s human rights minister told Reuters yesterday.

At least 27 people were killed in a series of bombings across Baghdad today, including three over a span of less than 10 minutes.

Dozens of Indian nurses stranded in territory held by Islamic extremists in Iraq returned home to southern India today aboard a special flight, officials said.

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

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.

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.

Barack Obama and US political leaders believe the president does not need Congress’ permission to take certain measures to quell the al Qaida-inspired uprising sweeping through Iraq, the Senate’s top Republican and others have said.

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.

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.

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 series of attacks in Iraq has left at least 24 Shiites and five policeman dead.