Baghdad (AFP) - An Iraqi parliamentary investigation found ex-premier Nuri al-Maliki and other officials responsible for jihadists overrunning second city Mosul, in a report being sent for possible legal action, lawmakers said Sunday.

While various top commanders and political leaders have long been blamed for the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group's disastrous takeover of the capital of Nineveh province, the investigative committee's report is the first time they have been named officially.

Committee member MP Abdulrahim al-Shammari said that Maliki, who was prime minister from 2006 until last year, was among those named, as did another member who declined to be identified.

The inclusion of Maliki's name -- who is now vice president -- was a source of controversy on the committee, with his Dawa party pushing for it to be left out.

Various former senior officials were also named in the report detailing the committee's findings, which has not been publicly released.

An MP on the committee said these include defence minister Saadun al-Dulaimi, army chief of staff Babaker Zebari, his deputy Aboud Qanbar, ground forces commander Ali Ghaidan, Nineveh operations command chief Mahdi al-Gharawi and the province's governor, Atheel al-Nujaifi.

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Kurdish Peshmerga forces look at a checkpoint held by Islamic State militants on June 16, 2014 in Ir …

The report was presented Sunday to parliament speaker Salim al-Juburi, who said it will be sent to the prosecutor general for legal action.

"No one is above the law and the questioning of the people, and the judiciary will punish those" responsible, Juburi said in a statement.

IS launched a devastating offensive on June 9 last year, overrunning Mosul the next day and then sweeping through large areas north and west of Baghdad.

Multiple Iraqi divisions collapsed during the initial assault in the north, in some cases abandoning weapons and other equipment which the jihadists then used to further their drive.

- Possible Ramadi prosecutions -

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Smoke billows from Husaybah, east of Ramadi, on July 16, 2015 as Iraq's army and allied paramili …

Maliki is widely viewed as having exacerbated sectarian tensions between the country's Shiite majority and its Sunni Arab minority.

Widespread discontent among Sunni Arabs, who say they were marginalised and targeted by Maliki's government, played a major role in aggravating the security situation in Iraq, culminating in the jihadist rout.

He also appointed commanders based on personal loyalty rather than competence, and was commander-in-chief of the armed forces during two years in which the Iraqi military did not carry out necessary training, leading to a decline in skills.

Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office announced that he had cleared the way for the military prosecution of senior commanders responsible for a military disaster in Ramadi, a city west of Baghdad.

IS seized Ramadi in May, after government forces had held out against militants there for more than a year.

Abadi approved "decisions of the investigative commission on the withdrawal of the Anbar operations command and units attached to it from the city of Ramadi", his office said in a statement.

Those include "referring a number of the leaders to the military judiciary for leaving their positions without orders and contrary to instructions (and) despite the issuance of a number of orders not to withdraw", it said.

Abadi previously said that forces in Ramadi "had to resist, and if they had resisted, we would not have lost Ramadi".

And a senior British military officer in a US-led anti-jihadist coalition, Brigadier Christopher Ghika, said the city "was lost because the Iraqi commander in Ramadi elected to withdraw".

"In other words, if he had elected to stay, he would still be there today," Ghika said.

Seoul (AFP) - Tens of thousands of South Korean and US troops Monday began a military exercise simulating an all-out North Korean attack, as Pyongyang matched Seoul in resuming a loudspeaker propaganda campaign across their heavily-fortified border.

The annual Ulchi Freedom exercise, which will run through August 28, is largely computer-simulated, but still involves 50,000 Korean and 30,000 US soldiers.

The drill plays out a full-scale invasion scenario by nuclear-armed North Korea and both Seoul and Washington insist it remains purely defensive in nature.

Pyongyang views Ulchi Freedom -- along with other annual South Korea-US drills -- as wilfully provocative and had threatened the "strongest military counter-action" should this year's exercise go ahead.

"Such large-scale joint military exercises... are little short of a declaration of a war," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, which oversees cross-border issues, said last week.

The committee specifically warned of the drill's potential for an accidental military clash that could trigger an "all-out" conflict.

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South Korean anti-war activists during a rally denouncing the annual Ulchi Freedom joint US-South Ko …

Military tensions are already running high along the Korean peninsula after South Korea blamed the North for landmine blasts that maimed members of a border patrol earlier this month.

The South retaliated by resuming high-decibel propaganda broadcasts across the border, using loudspeakers that had lain silent for more than a decade.

North Korea has denied any involvement in the mine blasts and threatened "indiscriminate" strikes against South Korean border units unless the broadcasts were halted immediately.

- North turns on loudspeakers -

But on Monday Seoul's defence ministry reported that Pyongyang had resumed its own loudspeaker propaganda campaign at a site on the eastern section of the border.

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A South Kroean soldier takes position during an anti-terror drill as part of the annual Ulchi Freedo …

The two Koreas had blasted propaganda messages at each other for years before the practice was discontinued by mutual agreement in 2004 during a period of rapprochement.

The rising tensions topped the agenda of a National Security Council meeting convened and chaired Monday morning by the South's President Park Geun-Hye.

"We need to maintain a strong military readiness to protect our people's lives and their properties from North Korea's provocations," Park told a cabinet meeting afterwards.

Because the armistice that ended the 1950-1953 Korean conflict was never replaced by a full peace treaty, the two Koreas technically remain at war.

Last Saturday both nations celebrated the 70th anniversary of the peninsula's liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and there had been hopes earlier this year that the event might offer the opportunity for some diplomatic fence-mending.

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South Korean soldiers during an anti-terror drill as part of the annual Ulchi Freedom exercise, outs …

Instead, the last few months have seen cross-border ties in a downward spiral, accompanied by the all-too familiar rhetoric of mutual recrimination.

The North has also targeted the US with its verbal broadsides, citing its nuclear arsenal amid threats of retaliation over Ulchi Freedom.

The powerful National Defence Commission stressed that North Korea had moved beyond the limits of conventional warfare.

It is now an "invincible power equipped with both latest offensive and defensive means ... including nuclear deterrence," the commission said, adding that only by dropping its "hostile" policies could the US "ensure the security of its mainland".

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Indonesian plane wreckage found

JAYAPURA, Indonesia (AP) — A search plane has spotted the wreckage of an Indonesian passenger plane that went missing with 54 people onboard, rescue officials said Monday.

There was no immediate word if there were any survivors from the crash, which happened in bad weather on Sunday in Indonesia's mountainous easternmost province of Papua.

The Trigana Air Service plane was flying from Papua's provincial capital, Jayapura, to the Papua city of Oksibil when it lost contact with Oksibil's airport. Transportation Ministry spokesman Julius Barata said there was no indication that the pilot had made a distress call.

Officials said the wreckage was spotted about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Oksibil, and Henry Bambang Soelistyo, the chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency, said search and rescue teams were preparing to try to reach the crash site by air and foot.

The ATR42-300 twin turboprop plane was carrying 49 passengers and five crew members on a scheduled 42-minute journey. Five children, including two infants, were among the passengers.

"Smoke was still billowing from the wreckage when it was spotted by a plane search," said Soelistyo who is leading the rescue operation from Sentani Airport in Jayapura, adding that bad weather and rugged terrain were hampering efforts to reach the wreckage located in a mountainous area at an altitude of 2,600 meters (about 8,500 feet).

He said elite forces from the Air Force and Army will build a helipad for evacuation purposes near the crash site.

Search planes went into the air early Monday after residents of a village not far from Oksibil told local police that they saw a plane flying low before crashing into a mountain, said Ludiyanto, who heads the search and rescue operation from Jayapura. Ludiyanto, like many Indonesians goes by one name.

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A file picture dated January 10, 2015 shows a plane of the Indonesian domestic airline Trigana takin …

Local media reports said all the passengers are Indonesians. The airline has not released a passenger manifest.

Oksibil, which is 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of Jayapura, was experiencing heavy rain, strong winds and fog when the plane lost contact with the airport minutes before it was scheduled to land.

Much of Papua is covered with impenetrable jungles and mountains. Some planes that have crashed in the past have never been found.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said in a statement ahead of Indonesia's 70th independence anniversary ceremony that he was calling "for a moment of silence and pray for the crew and passengers ahead of our independence anniversary."

European plane maker ATR said in a statement late Sunday that it "acknowledges the reported loss of contact" with the Trigana flight "and is standing by to support the relevant aviation authorities."

ATR, based in Toulouse, France, makes regional planes with 90 seats or less.

Indonesia has had its share of airline woes in recent years. The sprawling archipelago nation of 250 million people and some 17,000 islands is one of Asia's most rapidly expanding airline markets, but is struggling to provide enough qualified pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers and updated airport technology to ensure safety.

From 2007 to 2009, the European Union barred Indonesian airlines from flying to Europe because of safety concerns.

Last December, all 162 people aboard an AirAsia jet were killed when the plane plummeted into the Java Sea as it ran into stormy weather on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore.

That disaster was one of five suffered by Asian carriers in a 12-month span, including Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing in March 2014 with 239 people aboard during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Trigana Air Service, which commenced operations in 1991, had 22 aircraft as of December 2013 and flies to 21 destinations in Indonesia.

___

Associated Press writers Ali Kotarumalos and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Rome (AFP) - Italy warned Monday that Libya risked turning into "another Somalia" as it signed a joint statement with the US and several European allies condemning "barbaric" acts carried out by the Islamic State group there.

Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said if peace talks did not succeed in ending the country's civil war within a few weeks, "we will find ourselves with another Somalia two steps from our coasts".

"Time is limited, particularly now that IS in Sirte has become alarming," he told the Italian daily La Stampa, referring to last week's bloodshed in the former bastion of late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

IS militants seized control of the coastal city in June with militants beheading 12 local militiamen who had been battling them before hanging their bodies on crosses, according to the Libyan news agency LANA.

Italy has been badly hit by the chaos in the North African country, with hundreds of thousands of migrants attempting to reach its shores from Libya on often unseaworthy vessels -- 102,000 this year alone.

But the rise of a jihadist IS offshoot in the centre of the country is now causing alarm on the other side of the Mediterranean.

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Fighters from the Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn), an alliance of Islamist-backed militias, take cover as du …

"We are deeply concerned about reports that these fighters have shelled densely populated parts of the city and committed indiscriminate acts of violence to terrorise the Libyan population," said a joint statement by Britain, France, Germany, Spain and the United States.

The governments want all sides in Libya "to join efforts to combat the threat posed by transnational terrorist groups exploiting Libya for their own agenda", according to the statement released by the US State Department on Sunday.

The situation in Sirte underscores the "urgent need for parties in Libya to reach agreement on forming a government of national accord that, in partnership with the international community, can provide security against violent extremist groups seeking to destabilise the country," the statement added.

Libya descended into chaos after Kadhafi was driven from power by a 2011 uprising backed by Western air strikes, with two rival governments and several militias now battling for control of the oil-rich country.

The internationally recognised Libyan government based in the country's east has asked for an extraordinary meeting of the Arab League, urging Arab countries to "adopt measures to confront" IS.

A partial peace deal aimed at restoring stability was reached at UN-brokered peace talks last month, but leaders of the Islamist-backed General National Congress that sits in the capital Tripoli boycotted the pact, calling it "unsatisfactory".