Insurgents seized control early Tuesday of most of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, including the provincial government headquarters, offering a powerful demonstration of the mounting threat posed by extremists to Iraq’s teetering stability.
Fighters with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an al-Qaeda offshoot, overran the entire western bank of the city overnight after Iraqi soldiers and police apparently fled their posts, in some instances discarding their uniforms as they sought to escape the advance of the militants.
In Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced a “general mobilization” and asked parliament to declare a state of emergency, saying the government would not allow the area to fall “under the shadows of terror and terrorists.”. . .