Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians flee fighting in the northern city of Mosul over the past few days. Courtesy UNHCR

TRUMPETING their victory, Islamic militants have decreed to residents of the Iraqi cities where they have seized control that their brutal Sharia law now applies.

The militants have vowed to continue their march towards Baghdad, and they are being joined by Saddam Hussein loyalists determined to settle old scores.

The Islamic State issued a statement in which it declared it would start implementing its strict version of Sharia law in Mosul and other regions it had overrun. It said women should stay in their homes for modesty reasons, warned it would cut off the hands of thieves, and told residents to attend daily prayers. It said Sunnis in the military and police should abandon their posts and “repent’’ or else “face only death.’’

Iraq’s government appears paralysed with inaction as its US-trained and equipped forces simply melt away head of the advancing militants.

Ethnic minority Kurdish forces have moved into this power vacuum, taking over an air base and other posts abandoned by the military in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk. They insist the move was in preparation to defend the region from advancing Islamic extremists.

AUSTRALIA: Are we going back to war with Iraq?

The Islamic State, whose Sunni fighters have captured large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, aims to create an Islamic emirate spanning both sides of the border. It has pushed deep into parts of Iraq’s Sunni heartland once controlled by US forces because of the suspect loyalty of local police and military.

Skirmishes continued in several areas. Two communities near Tikrit — the key oil refining centre of Beiji and the city of Samarra, home to a prominent Shiite shrine — remained in government hands, according to Iraqi intelligence officials. The price of oil jumped to above $106 a barrel as the insurgency raised the risk of disruptions to supplies.

Three planeloads of Americans were evacuated from a major Iraqi air base in Sunni territory north of Baghdad, US officials said, and Germany has urged its citizens to immediately leave parts of Iraq, including Baghdad.

An Islamic State’s spokesman vowed to take the fight into Baghdad. In a sign of the group’s confidence, he even boasted that its fighters will take the southern Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, which hold two of the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims.

BOMBS, BLOODSHED AND BIN LADEN: The rise of the new al Qaeda

“We will march toward Baghdad because we have an account to settle there,’’ he said in an audio recording posted on militant websites commonly used by the group. The statement could not be independently verified.

It was left to Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin to voice Iraq’s determination to resist the uprising.

“There is no immediate danger of the violence spreading to Baghdad’,’ he said, adding that the city “is well protected and the government is in control.’’

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had asked parliament to declare a state of emergency that would give him and his Shiite-led government increased powers to run the country, but the lawmakers failed to assemble a quorum.

Feisal Istrabadi, a former Iraqi ambassador to the UN, said the rapid fall of Mosul and Tikrit required trust from the local population — something ISIL or al-Douri wouldn’t necessarily have on their own.

“Ordinary citizens feel disenfranchised and have no stake in the state anymore,’’ he said. “This is an alliance of convenience where multiple disaffected groups have come to defeat ... a common foe. ‘’

ARMED AND DANGEROUS: US military equipment captured

Several militant groups posted photos on social media purporting to show Iraqi military hardware captured by their own fighters, suggesting a broader-based rebellion like that in neighbouring Syria.

AMERICA REACTS

US State Department sources have told ABC America News that hundreds of contractors have been evacuated from an unnamed air base in northern Iraq to the relative safety of Baghdad as Islamic insurgents continue to steamroller into cities across the country.

That base is believed to be the massive former US military base at Habbaniyah, now used as a regional training and support centre, as well as an air force base.

The White House says Vice President Joe Biden told Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki overnight and promised to “confront the urgent and growing threat’.

That support is yet to be detailed.

The Obama administration has said it was beginning to consider the possibility of drone missions in support of Iraqi troops. Officials said Obama was not contemplating putting troops on the ground in Iraq.

But the UN says it needs action now.

United Nations relief agency UNICEF says more than half the scared and hungry horde marching under the hot summer sun is made up of children.

“The situation facing children is extremely alarming,” said Marzio Babille, UNICEF Representative in Iraq.

Thousands of refugees — many of them members of the Christian minority — have been taking shelter in schools and mosques on the road towards Baghdad outside Mosul and Tikrit.

Water is scarce and sanitation non-existent, the blog report says.

“This is an emergency on top of an emergency in Iraq — coming on the heels of other internal displacements of children and families in Anbar, as well as Syrian refugees in the north,” Babille said.

UNICEF has appealed for immediate emergency supplies, including: “safe drinking water, appropriate sanitation facilities, and emergency immunisation so crucial to preventing the spread of diseases, including polio, which has reappeared in Iraq this year, and measles”.

Turkish media reports evacuees have also been streaming towards nearby Kurdish cities seeking support. Turkish workers have since evacuated a water treatment construction site in the area.

There are reports of a refugee camp being established in the nearby city of Irbil.

Rizgar Moustafa, the district governor of Khabat in northern Iraq, told media that thousands had so far arrived in Irbil.

He said the refugees were not allowed entry into the city as there were too many seeking shelter.

The Sunni militants are now within about 130km of the capital Baghdad.

As the United States scrambles to find an answer to the extraordinary gains of Sunni militants, recriminations of its pullout and handover strategy in the war-torn nation have begun to flow.

In a stunning advance, an al-Qaeda splinter group has led gunmen in capturing two key Sunni-dominated cities in northern Iraq and pushing deep into parts of the Iraqi Sunni heartland once controlled by US troops, as soldiers and police abandoned their posts by the dozens.

Northern Iraq was one of the hardest areas to control during the years after the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated regime, propelling majority Shiites to power.

RECRIMINATIONS FLOW

Mark Hertling, a retired general who led American forces in the volatile region in 2007-2008 as they fought to end sectarian warfare that pushed the country to the brink of civil war, said neglect by the Shiite-led government left Iraq in a precarious position and “squandered’’ the opportunity for real progress.

“There is a continued use of the military as an element of power, as opposed to a security mechanism,’’ he said in a telephone interview Thursday. “There has been more of a focus on consolidating power by the current administration, versus taking care of people and ensuring their security.’’

Hertling said it was frustrating to watch the developments from afar and to listen to criticism of the US military’s costly effort to prepare Iraqi forces to take over their own security before the Americans withdrew at the end of 2011. Nearly 4500 US troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed in the fighting. There were a few years of relative peace, but violence has spiked again in recent months.

“It’s extremely hard for me to watch, especially given that we had a lot of young soldiers making the ultimate sacrifice, a lot of soldiers wounded and a lot of soldiers who just served their time,’’ he said.

He said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government had failed to solidify gains made by the Americans and focused instead on installing Shiites into leadership positions and replacing good military commanders with those it considered allies. Al-Maliki asked parliament this week to declare a state of emergency that would give him increased powers to run the country, but on Thursday the lawmakers failed to assemble a quorum to do so.

The Iraqi military forces “have not been treated well,’’ Hertling said. “While we were there, we were helping them train. We were protecting them.’’

“Holy smokes, I mean we were training them and operating with them ... and here it is three years later, and it’s a different military than we trained.’’

“There’s been a lot of change of leadership,’’ he said. “So I’m not prepared to take all the blame for them taking off their uniforms and giving away their arms.’’

He also blamed the civil war in neighbouring Syria for emboldening the Sunni insurgents and sending many fighters across the border on both sides. He said the recent increase in bloodshed in Iraq could have been prevented.

“The central government could have been more inclusive with all sects. ... They could have worked harder on solving the problems of Iraq,’’ he said. “It’s saddening and it’s disheartening and you know you can’t do anything about it, to fix it. The opportunity was there and I think it’s been squandered.’’

BAGHDAD VULNERABLE

The al-Qaeda-inspired group that captured two key Sunni-dominated cities in Iraq this week have vowed that Baghdad will be next.

It comes as Kurdish forces took control of the disputed Iraqi oil hub of Kirkuk to protect it from jihadists, after which a bomb targeted a Kurdish security minister who was visiting units southwest of Kirkuk. A news photographer, Kamran Najm Ibrahim, has also been killed while covering the fighting in the region in gunfire that saw 14 security personnel injured.

The latest unrest has prompted Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to declare that the spectacular seizure of Iraqi cities was a clear sign of the “total failure” of the US-led invasion.

“The unity of Iraq is at risk,” he said. “We are very worried by what is happening in Iraq. We warned long ago that the adventure undertaken by the Americans and the British would not end well.”

“We stand in solidarity with the Iraqi leadership, the Iraqi people who should restore peace and security in their country but actions of our Western partners cause a huge amount of questions,” he said.

US President Barack Obama said that Iraq will need more help from the US but he did not specify what type of assistance would be provided.

“We do have a stake in making sure that these jihadists are not getting a permanent foothold in either Iraq or Syria, for that matter,” Obama said during an Oval Office meeting with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

DAY OF PANIC: 500,000 flee their homes

THE NEXT OSAMA BIN LADEN: Who is behind the Iraqi uprising?

Fighters from the militant group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant took Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit on Wednesday as soldiers and security forces abandoned their posts and yielded ground once controlled by US troops.

That seizure followed the capture of much of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, the previous day. The group and its allies among local tribesmen also hold the city of Fallujah and other pockets of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province to the west of Baghdad.

Baghdad does not appear to be in imminent danger from a similar assault, although Sunni insurgents have stepped up car bombings and suicide attacks in the capital in recent months.

The capital, with its large Shiite population, would be a far harder target for the militants. So far, Islamic State fighters have stuck to the Sunni heartland and former Sunni insurgent strongholds where people are already alienated by the Shiite-led government over allegations of discrimination and mistreatment. The militants also would likely meet far stronger resistance, not only from government forces but by Shiite militias if they tried to advance on the capital.

In contrast, online video posted overnight showed some Tikrit residents celebrating the militant takeover. As Islamic State fighters drove through largely empty streets in a captured military Humvee and a pick-up truck mounted with an anti-aircraft gun, what appeared to be a few dozen people shouted “God is great,” and celebratory gunfire could be heard. The video appeared authentic and was consistent with reporting from the area.

The Islamic State’s spokesman vowed to take the fight into the capital at the heart of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. In a sign of the group’s confidence, he even boasted that its fighters will take the southern Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf, which hold two of the holiest shrines for Shiite Muslims.

“We will march toward Baghdad because we have an account to settle there,” he said in an audio recording posted on militant websites commonly used by the group. The statement could not be independently verified.

Brigadier General Shirko Rauf of the Kurdish peshmerga security forces said they are ready to push back against the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has overrun all of one province and parts of Kirkuk and two other provinces.

“We tightened our control of Kirkuk city and are awaiting orders to move toward the areas that are controlled by ISIL,” he said.

Brig. Shirko later said that Jaafar Mustafa, the Kurdish minister responsible for the peshmerga, was targeted in a bombing.

Mustafa survived, but the roadside bomb killed a peshmerga fighter. Kirkuk Governor Najm al-Din Karim said peshmerga forces had filled in gaps left by Iraqi soldiers who withdrew from their positions in the province.

“Army forces are no longer present, as happened in Mosul and Salaheddin,” Governor Karim said.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday that the insurgency proved the civil war in Syria was “infecting” the region.