Jihadists target Baghdad

Iraqi security forces battled militants at a northern entrance to the city of Samarra yesterday as jihadists pushed south in a lightning offensive towards Baghdad.

Samarra is home to a revered Shiite shrine bombed in 2006, sparking a sectarian conflict between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunni Arab minority that left tens of thousands dead.

It lies just 110km north of the Iraqi capital on the main highway from Mosul, where jihadists launched their offensive on Monday and tightened their grip yesterday .

Witnesses said the militants had arrived in trucks mounted with machine-guns. A policeman said his unit was battling them at the northwest entrance.

Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant are spearheading a spectacular offensive that began late on Monday.

They have since overrun Nineveh province and its capital Mosul, as well as parts of Kirkuk and Salaheddin.

Militants seized Salaheddin provincial capital Tikrit early yesterday. Witnesses subsequently said gunmen were also in full control of the Dur and Oja areas between Tikrit and Samarra.

Sunni insurgents from an al-Qaeda splinter group extended their control from Mosul to an area further south that includes Iraq's biggest oil refinery in a devastating show of strength against the Shiite-led government.

Sources said militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant drove into Baiji late on Tuesday in armed vehicles, torching the courthouse and police station after freeing prisoners.

The militants offered safe passage to about 250 men guarding the refinery on the outskirts of Baiji, about 200km south of Mosul, on condition they left.

Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, called on his country's leaders to come together to face "the serious, mortal" threat.

"The response has to be soon. There has to be a quick response to what has happened," he said.

Zebari said Baghdad would work with forces from the nearby Kurdish autonomous region to drive the fighters from Mosul.

Baiji resident Jasim al-Qaisi said the militants had also asked senior tribal chiefs to persuade local police and soldiers not to resist the takeover.

"Yesterday at sunset some gunmen contacted the most prominent tribal sheikhs in Baiji via cellphone and told them: 'We are coming to die or control Baiji, so we advise you to ask your sons in the police and army to lay down their weapons and withdraw before [Tuesday] evening prayer'."

The Baiji refinery can process 300000 barrels a day and supplies oil products to most of Iraq's provinces. A worker there said the morning shift had not been allowed to take over and the night shift was still on duty.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has become a dominant player in Iraq and Syria, where it has seized a string of cities over the past year.

More than 500000 Iraqis have already fled Mosul and the surrounding province .

The US, which pulled its troops out from Iraq two-and-half years ago, pledged to help Iraqi leaders "push back against this aggression".