Nouri al-Maliki... Prime Minister of Iraq and the secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party. Maliki imposed order on Basra wen the Shiites were going nuts, but has proven incapable of dealing with al-Qaeda's Sunni insurgency. Reelected to his third term in 2014...
said Friday Iraqi security forces have begun clearing cities of "terrorists" who seized swathes of territory and brought the military to the point of collapse.
Security forces "began their work to clear all our dear cities from these terrorists," Maliki said in a statement.
Maliki spoke from the embattled city of Samarra where he arrived Friday for a security meeting.
Militants attacked the city, located 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Storied Baghdad, earlier in the week, and witnesses said they were readying for another assault on Friday.
The city houses the revered Shiite al-Askari shrine, which was bombed by snuffies in 2006, sparking a bloody Sunni-Shiite sectarian war that killed tens of thousands.
A major bully boy offensive, spearheaded by powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original...
, has overrun all of one province and chunks of three more since Monday.
Security forces have so far failed to halt the push, with some abandoning their vehicles and positions and discarding their uniforms.
Earlier on Friday, Iraqi forces clashed with snuffies advancing on the city of Baquba, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Storied Baghdad.
Security forces were battling snuffies on the outskirts of Muqdadiyah, 35 kilometers (23 miles) northeast of Baquba, police and army officers said.
Baquba is the capital of Diyala province, whose mixed Arab, Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite population has made it a byword for violence ever since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.
The snuffies have already captured two picturesque provincial capitals this week -- Tikrit in Salaheddin province and second city djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
in Nineveh.
President Barack Obama
They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...
said Washington was examining "all the options" to help Iraq's beleaguered security forces resist the offensive, spearheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which began in Mosul late on Monday.
Washington has found rare common cause with its longtime foe Tehran, with both voicing dismay at the Sunni Death Eaters' advance and pledging to boost aid to the Shiite-led government.
ISIL front man Abu Mohammed al-Adnani vowed its fighters would press on to the capital and, further south, to the Shiite shrine city of Karbala, visited by millions of pilgrims from around the world each year.
Iraq has meanwhile bolstered Storied Baghdad's defenses as snuffies near the capital pressing an assault launched in second city Mosul, the interior ministry front man said on Friday.
"We put in place a new plan to protect Storied Baghdad," Brigadier General Saad Maan told AFP.
"The plan consists of intensifying the deployment of forces, and increasing intelligence efforts and the use of technology such as (observation) balloons and cameras and other equipment," Maan said.