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Obama’s War On ISIL Could Reach Beyond Iraq Into Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Fighters of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Friday captured key towns in eastern Syria adjoining territory the al Qaeda splinter group has seized in Iraq, a monitoring organization said.

The Islamists, whose stated aim is to create a strict Islamic state straddling national borders, took over the towns of Muhassan, Albulil and Albuomar, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

ISIL, which opposes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has also been fighting rival rebel groups in Deir al-Zor, an oil-producing eastern province of Syria devastated by the three-year-old civil war.

The newly captured towns are in an area running along the Euphrates River that links Syria and Iraq and are significant because they are close to Deir al-Zor's military airport and the Syrian city of al-Mayadin, the Observatory's Rami Abdurrahman said.

"If you control al-Mayadin, this means there are no more important cities except Abu Kamal out of (ISIL) control," in the province, he said, referring to another town close to the Syria-Iraq border. "They are pushing forward."

Muhassan, which is just over 100 km (60 miles) from the border with Iraq, is an important position for any attempt to capture the airport, he added.

The Observatory, which opposes Assad, tracks the Syrian civil war through a network of activists in the country.

Deir al-Zor has seen more than two years of fighting between opposition fighters and the Assad government forces and some civilians fled to Iraq to escape it. A second wave of internecine war among anti-Assad factions has erupted in parts of Syria they control.

ISIL, a rebranding of al Qaeda in Iraq which fought American forces during the U.S. occupation, has been disowned by the al Qaeda leadership.

It took neighborhoods of Deir al-Zor city last month from the Nusra Front, Syria's official al Qaeda affiliate.

ISIL has a core of foreign fighters and has imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic law on the territories it controls.

A car bomb in Syria's western Hama province on Friday killed 34 and wounded more than 50, Syria's state news agency SANA said, blaming the attack on rebels.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on a government-controlled village.

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall; editing by Andrew Roche)

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BAGHDAD (AP) — The spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiite majority called for a new, "effective" government Friday, increasing pressure on the country's prime minister a day after U.S. President Barack Obama challenged him to create a more inclusive leadership or risk a sectarian civil war.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's comments at Friday prayers contained thinly veiled criticism that Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, in office since 2006, was to blame for the nation's crisis over the blitz by Sunni insurgents led by an al-Qaida splinter group that seeks to create a new state spanning parts of Iraq and Syria and ruled by its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Al-Sistani's remarks come as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to travel to Iraq soon to press its government to share more power.

While al-Maliki's State of Law bloc won the most seats in parliament in the Iraq's April 30 election, his hopes for a third term are now in doubt with rivals challenging him from within the broader Shiite alliance. In order to govern, his bloc must first form a coalition with other parties.

And with Iraq asking the U.S. for airstrikes to temper the militants' advance — especially as the insurgents were said to be preparing Friday for another assault on the country's biggest oil refinery — al-Maliki appears increasingly vulnerable.

"It is necessary for the winning political blocs to start a dialogue that yields an effective government that enjoys broad national support, avoids past mistakes and opens new horizons toward a better future for all Iraqis," al-Sisanti said in a message delivered by his representative Ahmed al-Safi in the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

Can Iraq's PM hold his country together?Play Video

The Iranian-born al-Sistani, who is believed to be 86, lives in the Shiite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad. A recluse, he rarely ventures out of his home and does not give interviews. Iraq's majority Shiites deeply revere him, and a call to arms he made last week prompted thousands of Shiites to volunteer to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which was once part of al-Qaida.

Al-Sistani's call to arms has given the fight against the Islamic State militants the feel of a religious war between Shiites and Sunnis. His office in Najaf dismissed that charge, and al-Safi on Friday said: "The call for volunteers targeted Iraqis from all groups and sects. ... It did not have a sectarian basis and cannot be."

Al-Maliki has been seeking to place the blame for the chaos on the Islamic State and not his perceived exclusion of the Sunnis. However, questions persist on how much support, if any, the Islamic State enjoys among the Sunni population in areas it now controls.

Ali Hatem al-Salman, a prominent tribal Sunni leader and a critic of al-Maliki, said Sunni tribesmen would eventually fight the extremist Islamic State.

Using the commonly used Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, he told The Associated Press on Thursday: "Daash themselves know that the tribes will push them out. ... There can't be any trust given to Daash."

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Iraqi men check in at main army recruiting center to volunteer for military service in Baghdad, Iraq …

Al-Maliki's Shiite-led government long has faced criticism of discriminating against Iraq's Sunni and Kurdish populations. But it is his perceived marginalization of the once-dominant Sunnis that sparked recent violence reminiscent of Iraq's darkest years of sectarian warfare after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Iraq's newly elected parliament must meet by June 30 to elect a speaker and a new president, who in turn will ask the leader of the largest bloc to form a new government within 15 days.

Al-Maliki has been doing the prime minister job in a caretaker capacity since the April 30 election. While it is far from certain he would step aside, if he were to relinquish the leadership post, according to the constitution, the president assumes the job until a new prime minister is elected.

However, the president, Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, has been ill and getting treatment in Germany since 2012. So the vice president, Khudeir al-Khuzaie, a Shiite, should assume the prime minister's job until one is elected.

Shiite politicians familiar with the secretive efforts to remove al-Maliki said two names mentioned as possible replacements are former vice president Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a French-educated economist who is also a Shiite, and Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who served as Iraq's first prime minister after Saddam Hussein's ouster.

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Iraqi men crowd a truck to join the Iraqi army at the main recruiting center in Baghdad, Iraq, Thurs …

With Iraq in turmoil, al-Maliki's rivals have mounted a campaign to force him out of office, with some angling for support from Western backers and regional heavyweights. On Thursday, their effort received a boost from Obama, who said: "Only leaders that can govern with an inclusive agenda are going to be able to truly bring the Iraqi people together and help them through this crisis."

An "inclusive agenda" has not been high on the priorities of al-Maliki, however. Many of al-Maliki's former Kurdish and Shiite allies have been clamoring to deny the prime minister a third term in office, charging that he has excluded them from a narrow decision-making circle of close confidants.

Al-Maliki's efforts last year to crush protests by Sunnis complaining of discrimination under his Shiite-led government sparked a new wave of violence by militants, who took over the city of Fallujah in the western, Sunni-dominated province of Anbar and parts of the provincial capital, Ramadi.

Iraqi army and police forces battling them for months have been unable to take most areas back, and over the past week or so the militants have also taken over the cities of Mosul and Tikrit.

Less than three years after Obama heralded the end of America's war in Iraq, he said Thursday he was dispatching up to 300 military advisers to help quell the insurgency. They would join up to 275 being positioned in and around Iraq to provide security and support for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and other American interests.

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Iraqi men line up for physical examinations at the main army recruiting center to volunteer for mili …

But he was adamant that U.S. troops would not be returning to combat.

Despite the deteriorating conditions, Obama has held off approving airstrikes sought by the Iraqi government. The president said he could still approve "targeted and precise" strikes if the situation on the ground required it, noting that the U.S. had stepped up intelligence gathering in Iraq to help identify potential targets.

U.S. officials say manned and unmanned U.S. aircraft are now flying over Iraq 24 hours a day on intelligence collection missions.

Not all Shiites welcomed the announcement that more Americans were heading to Iraq.

A Shiite cleric, Nassir al-Saedi, warned that the 300 advisers would be attacked. Al-Saedi is loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia fought the Americans in at least two rounds of street warfare during their eight-year presence in Iraq.

"Our message to the occupier: ... We will be ready for you if you are back," he told a Friday sermon attended by al-Sadr supporters in Baghdad's Sadr City district.

Mohammed al-Khalidi, a Sunni lawmaker who favors a replacing al-Maliki's government with a more inclusive one involving Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, said he thought "Obama's statement was balanced and reasonable."

"But," he added, "U.S. officials should be aware that the situation in Iraq needs an immediate remedy because Iraq is heading to the unknown."

Baghdad (AFP) - Dozens of men crowd shops in central Baghdad, perusing military equipment including helmets, boots and camouflage uniforms that they will need after volunteering to fight against a major militant offensive.

Some leave with plastic bags of camouflage fatigues, while others buy gear including pocket-laden vests that may or may not actually protect them against bullets, but nonetheless look the part.

Urged on by a call from top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, thousands of Iraqis have volunteered to fight against Sunni Arab militants who have overrun swathes of northern and central Iraq.

For those trading in military gear, business is good.

"From the beginning of the crisis, there was an increase in sales... of about 200 percent, 300 percent," while prices have risen as well, says Osama, the owner of one shop in central Baghdad.

He sells everything from uniforms, boots, helmets and vests to grips and sights for assault rifles, military patches and rank insignia.

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Iraqi volunteers wait at a recruitment center on June 20, 2014, in the capital Baghdad (AFP Photo/Al …

Previously, "all sales were to the army and the police," but that changed with Sistani's call and the worsening situation in the country, Osama says.

Now, everyone from young men to those with grey in their hair are flocking to buy military equipment in the Bab al-Sharji area of Baghdad.

- 'The country needs me' -

"We do not have military experience, but God willing, we will gain military experience from people older than us," says Walid Najm, a young man wearing sunglasses and a hat with a digital camouflage pattern who decided to volunteer to fight the militants.

"I am a barber, but I left this career because the country needs me," he says, later trying on a camouflage-covered helmet and protective goggles.

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Newly-recruited Iraqi volunteers take part in a training session on June 20 2014, in the southern Sh …

Hamza Zora, a short man with a grey-flecked black beard, carries a folded camouflage uniform he bought.

Unlike Najm, Zora has five years of military experience from Saddam Hussein's forces, and is now ready to use his skills against militants who include supporters of the ousted dictator.

Abbas Sadiq, who is accompanying Zora, says he wants to "defend the innocent people," whether they are Sunni, Shiite or Christian.

He is volunteering with Saraya al-Salam, a force announced by powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that is to include members of his officially inactive Mahdi Army.

Sadiq has already bought his uniform, and says the total cost of necessary equipment is roughly 100,000 to 150,000 Iraqi dinars ($83 to $125).

The area of Bab al-Sharji in which the military shops are located is strung with coils of barbed wire and guarded by police and soldiers.

It has been bombed before, and some nervous patrons and shop owners shout that they do not want to be filmed.

Most shops offer similar selections of items, but one sells patches for Saraya al-Salam, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Ketaeb Hezbollah, the latter two of which are Shiite militant groups that split from Sadr's Mahdi Army in past years.

There has been a run on military uniforms in Bab al-Sharji, with thousands selling out in a matter of days, says shop owner Jabbar Assab.

"Most of the buyers are volunteers," he says.

He adds that the same sweeping unrest that led to the surge in demand for military gear is also blocking routes used to import new stock.

"There is no way to import more," Assab says

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is "totally out of control," according to a senior official for Doctors Without Borders, who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in responding.

The outbreak has caused more deaths than any other of the disease, said another official with the medical charity. Ebola has been linked to more than 330 deaths in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to the World Health Organization.

International organizations and the governments involved need to send in more health experts and increase public education messages about how to stop the spread of the disease, Bart Janssens, the director of operations for the medical group in Brussels, told The Associated Press on Friday.

"The reality is clear that the epidemic is now in a second wave," Janssens said. "And, for me, it is totally out of control."

The Ebola virus, which causes internal bleeding and organ failure, spreads through direct contact with infected people. There is no cure or vaccine, so containing an outbreak focuses on supportive care for the ill and isolating them to limit the spread of the virus.

The current outbreak, which began in Guinea either late last year or early this year, had appeared to slow before picking up pace again in recent weeks, including spreading to the Liberian capital for the first time.

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Map locates Guinea.; 1c x 3 inches; 46.5 mm x 76 mm;

"This is the highest outbreak on record and has the highest number of deaths, so this is unprecedented so far," said Armand Sprecher, a public health specialist with Doctors Without Borders.

According to the WHO, the highest previous death toll was in the first recorded Ebola outbreak in Congo in 1976, when 280 deaths were reported. Because Ebola often touches remote areas and the first cases sometimes go unrecognized, it is likely that there are deaths that go uncounted during outbreaks.

The multiple locations of the current outbreak and its movement across borders make it one of the "most challenging Ebola outbreaks ever," Fadela Chaib, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said earlier in the week.

But Janssens' description of the Ebola outbreak was even more alarming, and he warned that the countries involved had not recognized the gravity of the situation. He criticized WHO for not doing enough to prod local leaders; the U.N. health agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"There needs to be a real political commitment that this is a very big emergency," he said. "Otherwise, it will continue to spread, and for sure it will spread to more countries."

But Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia's deputy minister of health, said the highest levels of government are working to contain the outbreak, noting that Liberia had a long period with no new cases before this second wave.

Governments and international agencies are definitely struggling to keep up with the outbreak, said Unni Krishnan of Plan International, which is providing equipment to the three countries. But he noted that the disease is striking in one of the world's poorest regions, where public health systems are already fragile.

With more than 40 international staff currently on the ground and four treatment centers, Doctors Without Borders has reached its limit to respond, Janssens said. It is unclear, for instance, if the group will be able to set up a treatment center in Liberia, like the ones it is running in in Guinea and Sierra Leone, he said.

Janssens said the only way to stop the disease's spread is to persuade people to come forward when symptoms occur and to avoid touching the sick and dead.

He said this outbreak is particularly challenging because it began in an area where people are very mobile and has spread to even more densely populated areas, like the capitals of Guinea and Liberia. The disease typically strikes sparsely populated areas in central or eastern Africa, where it spreads less easily, he said.

By contrast, the epicenter of this outbreak is near a major regional transport hub, the Guinean city of Gueckedou.

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Associated Press video journalist Bishr Eltouni in Brussels and writer Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia, Liberia, contributed to this report.

West Africa Ebola outbreak 'totally out of control'

Doctors Without Borders says it's stretched to the limit in responding to the epidemic there.
Linked to more than 330 deaths

Associated Press Videos

UN: Over 50 Million People Displaced Worldwide

TAZA KHORMATO, Iraq (AP) — In a battered car loaded with blankets and clothes, Hassan Abbas and his mother left a dusty town in northern Iraq, fleeing this week's violence and joining what the United Nations says is the largest worldwide population of displaced people since World War II.

The U.N. refugee agency's latest annual report, released Friday, found more than 50 million people worldwide were displaced at the end of last year, reflecting an ever-expanding web of international conflicts.

Last year's increase in displaced people was the largest in at least two decades, driven mainly by the civil war in Syria, which has claimed an estimated 160,000 lives and forced 9 million people to flee their homes. Now Iraq is adding to that tide.

"I am going to sell this phone so we have money," Abbas said at a checkpoint outside the town of Taza Khormato, near the city of Kirkuk, where he will move in with relatives, and where 20 people will share a single home.

He and his 50-year-old mother, Shukriya, decided to leave the town after fighters from the al-Qaida breakaway group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant shelled and burned down the neighboring village of Basheer.

"My heart is sick. It's sick. From the fear, the shelling, the explosions," Shukriya said, sobbing. "They say they killed children in Basheer. By God all we want is peace."

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Eritrean female asylum seekers sit along with their children on the sidewalk in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday …

The jihadi group swept across northern Iraq last week, seizing the city of Mosul and carrying Syria's brutal civil war across the border. Their swift advance set the stage for a conflict that has already displaced hundreds of thousands and could widen.

Iraqis who have fled over the past week were not included in the U.N. High Commission for Refugees' annual global trends report. The Kurdish regional government says at least 300,000 people have fled the latest violence.

The agency found that at the end of last year, 51.2 million people had been forced from their homes worldwide, including refugees, the internally displaced and asylum-seekers. That was the highest figure since the U.N. began collecting numbers in the early 1950s.

It's also 6 million more people than at the end of the previous year, reflecting a failure to resolve longstanding conflicts or prevent the eruption of new ones, the head of the U.N. refugee agency said in announcing the report.

"The world has shown a limited capacity to prevent conflicts and to find a timely solution for them," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.

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An Eritrean girl along with her family asylum seekers sits on the sidewalk in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, …

"Today, we not only have an absence of a global governance system, but we have sort of an unclear sense of power in the world," Guterres told reporters in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, where the report was released.

By the end of last year, 2.5 million Syrians had become refugees in neighboring countries and more than 6.5 million had been displaced within Syria, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Also contributing to the figures are conflicts and persecution in other countries, including the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

"These numbers represent a quantum leap in forced displacement around the world," Guterres said.

Aid agencies have struggled to keep pace. On Friday, the World Food Program, another U.N. agency, said it was forced to cut rations to refugees in several countries.

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Eritrean asylum seekers eat lunch together on the sidewalk in Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, June 20, 2014. S …

"We are being squeezed. Other U.N. agencies are increasingly squeezed," along with humanitarian aid groups, spokesman Peter Smerdon told The Associated Press.

"This means that ultimately the poor, the most vulnerable, the innocent civilians who have escaped conflicts with their lives and reached refuge in a country which is at peace, they will suffer because their assistance cannot be delivered."

The data were compiled using records from governments, non-government partner organizations and the UNHCR.

Of 51.2 million displaced people worldwide last year, 16.7 million were refugees outside their countries' borders. More than half of the refugees under UNHCR's care — 6.3 million — had been in exile for more than five years, the agency said.

By country, the biggest refugee populations were Afghan, Syrian and Somali, the report said.

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An Eritrean asylum seeker looks through a gap of a temporary shelter on the sidewalk in Sanaa, Yemen …

The countries hosting the largest number of refugees were Pakistan, Iran and Lebanon, which is bitterly divided over the war in neighboring Syria and has seen several deadly attacks linked to the conflict.

More than a million Syrians have registered in Lebanon as refugees since the conflict in their country started in March 2011. The refugees now make up nearly one fourth of Lebanon's population of 4.5 million.

Many of the displaced people have left behind ghost towns where fighters haunt empty streets. Inside Taza Khormato, shops were shuttered and houses closed up. In one home, a group of men aged 15 to 50 gathered assault rifles and rocket launchers.

"There are no families here anymore, only the men," said Adel Fadel, a 60-year-old farmer with broken teeth. "We sent them away, because we were afraid" the Islamic State would attack.

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Krauss reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Barbara Surk in Beirut and John Heilprin in Geneva contributed to this report.