[Barry Barack having another *Doh* moment]
By HAMZA HENDAWI and SAMEER N. YACOUB
AGHDAD (AP) — Hundreds of young Iraqi men gripped by religious and nationalistic fervor streamed into volunteer centers across Baghdad Saturday, answering a call by the country's top Shiite cleric to join the fight against Sunni militants advancing in the north.
"By God's will, we will be victorious." said one volunteer, Ali Saleh Aziz. "We will not be stopped by the ISIL or any other terrorists."
The massive response to
the call by the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, which was
issued via his representative on Friday, comes as sectarian tensions are
threatening to push the country back toward civil war in the worst
crisis since U.S. forces withdrew at the end of 2011.
Fighters
from an al-Qaida splinter group, drawing support from former Saddam
Hussein-era figures and other disaffected Sunnis, have made dramatic
gains in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad after overrunning Iraq's
second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday. Soldiers and policemen have
melted away in the face of the lightning advance, and thousands have
fled to the self-rule Kurdish region in northern Iraq.On Saturday, insurgents seized the small town of Adeim in Diyala province after Iraqi security forces pulled out, said the head of the municipal council, Mohammed Dhifan. Adeim is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad. There was no official confirmation of the loss of the town.
Jawad al-Bolani, a lawmaker and
former Cabinet minister close to al-Maliki, meanwhile, said a military
offensive was underway Saturday to drive the insurgents from Tikrit,
Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad, although fighting in the area could
not be confirmed.
The fast-moving rebellion has emerged as the biggest threat to Iraq's stability since even before the Americans left.
Long-simmering
Sunni-Shiite tensions boiled over after the U.S.-led invasion ousted
Saddam in 2003, leading to vicious fighting between the two Muslim
sects. But the bloodshed ebbed in 2008 after a so-called U.S. surge, a
revolt by moderate Sunnis against al-Qaida in Iraq and a Shiite militia
cease-fire.
The latest bout of
fighting, stoked by the civil war in neighboring Syria, has pushed the
nation even closer to a precipice that could partition it into Sunni,
Shiite and Kurdish zones.
Shiite cleric and political
leader Ammar al-Hakim was shown on television networks donning a
camouflaged military fatigue as he spoke to volunteers from his party,
although he still wore his clerical black turban that designates him as a
direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
State-run
television also aired a constant flow of nationalist songs, clips of
soldiers marching or singing, flying aircraft, brief interviews with
troops vowing to crush the militants and archival clips of the nation's
top Shiite clerics.
Extensive
clips of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit on Friday to the city of
Samarra, home to a much revered Shiite shrine that was bombed in 2006,
also were broadcast.
The
footage seemed clearly aimed at rehabilitating his reputation in the
eyes of Shiites, with a dour-faced al-Maliki seen praying at the Shiite
shrine — an apparent reminder of his commitment to his faith and the
protection of its followers. He also declared that Samarra would be the
assembly point for the march farther north to drive out the militants,
another decision with a religious slant to win over Shiites.
In an address to military
commanders in Samarra, he warned that army deserters could face the
death penalty if they don't report back to their units. But he insisted
the crisis had a silver lining.
"This
is our chance to clean and purge the army from these elements that only
want to make gains from being in the army and the police," he said.
"They thought that this is the beginning of the end but, in fact, we say
that this is the beginning of their end and defeat," he said.
Also
Saturday, the Iraqi government's counterterrorism department, said the
son of Saddam's vice president, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was killed in an
air raid by the Iraqi air force in Tikrit. It said Ahmed al-Douri was
killed with some 50 other Saddam loyalists and ISIL fighters on Friday.
The report could not be immediately verified.
They
were responding to a call by Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric for
Iraqis to defend their country against the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant, which in a lightning advance.
___
Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report from Baghdad.
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