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Militants ISIS have proclaimed a new caliphate - or Islamic state - stretching across Iraq and Syria, as the Iraqi army warns the declaration poses a ‘threat to all countries’.

The al-Qaeda breakaway group took to the internet to post a warning message, declaring: “This is not the first border we will break.

"We will break other borders.”

The insurgents declared the caliphate - a medieval word to describe a Islamic state - over territories it has claimed between between Iraq and Syria following weeks of fierce fighting.

A map showing the extent of their ambitions for the future shows countries for expansion marked in black across North Africa, into mainland Spain, across the Middle East and into Muslim countries verging onto Russia as their ultimate aim.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) used the web, video and digital communications to name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as universal Islamic leader and called on Muslims everywhere to swear loyalty to him.

He was named as “Caliph” of the Muslim world, a title last used by Ottoman sultan Abdulmecid II, deposed 90 years ago after World War One.

ISIS made their declaration as the holy month of Ramadan began, 1 insisting al-Baghdadi now carried all religious and civil power over the world’s Muslims.

Spokesman, Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, in an audio statement posted online, said: “Listen to your caliph and obey him.

"Support your state, which grows every day.”

Al-Adnani loosely defined the Islamic state’s territory as running from northern Syria to the Iraqi province of Diyala north-east of Baghdad - a large swathe of land crossing the border that is already largely under the Islamic State’s control.

The move follows a three-week drive for territory by militants and allies among Iraqi’s Sunni Muslim minority.

The alleged caliphate aims to erase colonial-era borders and defy the US - and Iranian-backed government of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad.

But it also poses a direct challenge to the global leadership of al-Qaeda, which disowned ISIS, and to conservative Gulf Arab Sunni rulers, who already view the group as a security threat.

Iraqi troops are still said to be battling to dislodge an al-Qaeda splinter group from the city of Tikrit, which lies around 90 miles northwest of Baghdad.

The government has appealed for international help, accusing Sunni neighbours, mainly Saudi Arabia, of fostering Islamist militancy in Syria and Iraq.

Iraqi army spokesman Qassim Atta said declaring a caliphate could backfire by showing that al-Baghdadi’s group posed a risk to other nations.

“This declaration is a message by Islamic State not only to Iraq or Syria but to the region and the world.

"The message is that Islamic State has become a threat to all countries,” he said.

“I believe all countries, once they read the declaration, will change their attitudes because it orders everybody to be loyal to it.”

But in a video, mainly in English, ISIS fighters claimed they plan to break other borders.

The threat was aimed at the agreements by Britain and France nearly 100 years ago with new countries born from the ashes of the Ottoman empire in the wake of the World War I.

The fighter, in the video, also pledges the caliphate would not stop there, and would also free Palestine.

He said:” We are not here to replace an Arab cahoot with a western cahoot. Our jihad is more lofty.

“We are fighting to make the word of Allah the greatest.”

The fighter was filmed alongside abandoned Iraqi army vehicles, some left by the original US forces, saying: “There is no army in the world that can withstand the soldiers of Islam.”

(Image: Reuters)

In the film, a police station is blown up as ISIS fighters clamber into an American Humvee captured in Tikrit.

“Look how much America spends to fight Islam and it ends up just being in our pockets.”

The Iraqi army attempted last week to retake Tikrit city, home of Saddam Hussein, but was fought off.

Battles still raged between the opposing forces on the southern outskirts yesterday.

The fighting has started to draw in international support for Baghdad, two and a half years after U.S. troops pulled out.

The U.S. is flying armed and unarmed aircraft in Iraq’s airspace but says it has not engaged in fighting.

Russia has sent its first warplanes to Baghdad, filling an order for five second-hand Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack jets.

The government said they will be operational within a few days.