UN warns of ‘murder of all kinds’ in Iraq

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.

US president Barack Obama said he is weighing options for countering the insurgency, but warned Iraqi leaders that he would not take military action unless they moved to address the country’s political divisions.

Fighters from the al Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant made gains, driving government forces at least temporarily from two towns in an ethnically mixed province northeast of Baghdad. The assault threatens to embroil Iraq more deeply in a wider regional conflict feeding off the chaos caused by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.