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Security forces battled against militants for control over a strategic location in northern Iraq on Monday, thereby forcing half the region’s population to abandon their homes. Meanwhile, the United States of America have mulled over the thought of using drone strikes against the militant forces leading the charge. John Kerry, US Secretary of State, said that he was also willing to cooperate with Iran to resolve the crisis in arch-foe Iraq, which has caused Australia and the US to evacuate staff members from its embassies in the country.
Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have reportedly killed hundreds of Iraqi soldiers as they continue to push towards Baghdad; they have received international condemnation for their massacre of Iraqi soldiers over the weekend.
On Monday, militants took control of many neighborhoods in the Shi’ite Turkman majority town of Tal Afar in Nineveh province, residents and officials said. According to local official Abdul al Abbas, Tal Afar had to deal with “martyrs, wounded, chaos and refugees”, and nearly half of the area’s population, around 200,000 people, have had to flee their homes. Tal Afar, which lies close to the Syrian border, is a Shi’te hub in what is otherwise a Sunni and Kurdish dominated region. It was briefly able to hold off a militant offensive led by ISIL, which has seen them gain swathes of territory to the north of Baghdad in less than a week. On Sunday, militants had taken over the Al-Adhim area in the province of Diyala to the north of Baghdad.
On Monday, Kerry said that the US is considering drone srikes as an option in combating the militants, after US President Barack Obama had said that the US was weighing “all options” on how to help the Iraqi government. Washington has already sent an aircraft carrier to address the problem; however, Obama has already ruled out the possibility of return of US troops to Iraq – the US had last sent troops to Iraq in 2003, and had only withdrawn them in 2011.