ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s embattled government urged the terrified residents of Mosul to set up armed vigilante groups and fight Islamic militants who have taken over the city, the country’s second-largest and in Nineveh province.
In a meeting in Baghdad presided by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, members of the Nineveh Crisis Team said the city vigilantes should help the Iraqi police and security forces in their fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which stormed into Mosul on Sunday, after about 24 hours of clashes with the police and army.
Nineveh governor, Athil al-Nujayfi fled the city on the second day of the fighting and is now believed to be in the Kurdish city of Duhok, where he has set up an interim administration to run official affairs in Nineveh.
At the end of the Baghdad meeting, the Crisis Team advised the people of Nineveh to avoid any contact or gathering around ISIS centers, “because those gatherings will be a target for the Iraqi armed forces.”
It also called an open-ended holiday for all government employees who have fled the city or are trapped in their homes due to the fighting.
The ISIS has in the past two days overrun more Sunni cities in the central regions of Iraq. However, their center of strength seems to lie in Mosul, with its proximity to the Syrian border.
As the militants enjoy free reign across the Sunni center of Iraq without any opposition, the Iraqi government has asked religious leaders, political groups and tribes “to confront the terrorists.”
Meanwhile, a more high-level meeting held in the house of former Iraqi prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari last night between Iraqi groups ended without reaching an agreement.
According to an official source who spoke to Rudaw, the leaders got into a heated debate, each blaming the other for the militants’ rapid advance and the crisis in the country.
An official source at the meeting said that Kurdish and Sunni delegates attending had refused to vote for declaring a state of emergency, as suggested by Maliki.
