Iraq militants seize two more towns

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.

The fresh gains by insurgents, spearheaded by fighters from the al Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, come after the militants captured the country’s second-largest city of Mosul and Saddam Hussein’s home town of Tikrit, as well as military and police bases.