ISIL militants seize strategic city in Nineveh: Reports
There are conflicting reports that militants of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have overrun the strategic city of Tal Afar in Nineveh province.
Some reports on the situation in Tal Afar said late on Sunday that the city had been seized by the militants following heavy fighting with Iraqi forces.
"The city was overrun by militants. Severe fighting took place, and many people were killed," Reuters quoted an unnamed city official as saying.
Earlier in the day, it was reported that Iraqi troops and local tribesmen had foiled an attack by the militants belonging to the so-called ISIL on the city.
According to local officials, 8,000 tribal fighters have joined the battle against the Takfiri militants in Nineveh province.
Reports also said that Iraqi troops managed to recapture two towns from the militants, north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Army forces are now pushing the militants back from other areas they had captured.
On June 10, the ISIL militants took control of Mosul, which was followed by the fall of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced out of their homes since then.
The ISIL militants have vowed to continue their raid toward Baghdad.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the security crisis and growing terrorism in his country, denouncing the Al Saud regime as a major supporter of global terrorism.
IA/MAM/AS

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The still photographs uploaded on the ISIS Twitter feed were bloody and gruesome, showing the insurgents, many wearing black masks, lining up at the edges of what looked like hastily dug mass graves and apparently firing their weapons into groups of young men who were bound and packed closely together in large groups.
The photographs showed at least five massacre sites, with the victims lying in shallow mass graves with their hands tied behind their backs. The number of victims that could be seen in any of the pictures numbered between 20 and 60 in each of the sites, although it was not clear whether the photographs showed the entire graves. Some appeared to be long ditches.
The photographs showed the executioners flying the ISIS black flag, with captions such as “the filthy Shiites are killed in the hundreds,” “The liquidation of the Shiites who ran away from their military bases,” and “This is the destiny of Maliki’s Shiites,” referring to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Many of the captions were viciously mocking toward the purported victims. In one photograph, showing 25 young men walking toward an apparent execution site, where armed, masked men awaited, the caption read, “Look at them walking to death on their own feet.”
And another showed a couple hundred prisoners, all of whom had been made to stand, bent over from the waist with their hands clasped behind their backs, as armed men guarded them. All were in civilian clothes, and the caption claimed they had jettisoned their uniforms. “They were lions in uniform, and now they are just ostriches,” it read.
Other photographs showed prisoners, mostly young men, stuffed in large numbers in dump trucks and pickup trucks. They appeared extremely frightened.
A senior Iraqi government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make press statements, said news of the executions was slow to circulate because Twitter had been blocked. “I don’t doubt they are real, but 1,700 is a big number,” he said. “We are trying to control the reaction. They are trying to bring back the 2005 to 2006 days.” Sunni and Shiite militias engaged in a wave of tit-for-tat killings of civilians during that period, killing tens of thousands.