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BAGHDAD — The violent struggle over Iraq on Saturday consumed cities and towns widely spread over the north and west of the country, with both Sunni militants and the Iraqi Army claiming gains.
An Iraqi security official and eyewitnesses, meanwhile, said a deadly gun battle near Kirkuk had broken out between two of the most powerful Sunni militant groups. The battle, they said, pitted the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which is leading the battle with the Shiite-dominated government, against its Baathist allies and left 17 dead, according to the official.
In Baghdad, the day’s violence had a more familiar sectarian cast. A bomb exploded in a market in the predominantly Shiite Zafaraniya area, killing four shoppers. Three hours later, two men were found dumped nearby, handcuffed and shot to death. The victims were most likely Sunnis since the area is controlled by Shiite militiamen.
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Elsewhere, the battles were between government supporters and the Sunni militants trying to press forward with their offensive.
In the insurgent-held city of Tikrit, in Salahuddin Province, the morgue at the hospital reported that it had received 84 bodies of policemen, soldiers and government employees who had been executed. Seven of them had been beheaded, according to an official there who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the militants.
In western Anbar Province, two more towns fell to ISIS near the border town of Qaim, which fell to the rebels on Friday.
A local government leader, Muthana al-Rawi, said the two towns taken Saturday, Ana and Rawaa, were captured after troops and police officers fled Qaim and “sleeper cells of the militants showed up to fill the gap and take control.â€
Eyewitnesses from another border town, Al Waleed, said the Syrian Air Force had bombed ISIS troops on the Iraq side who were trying to capture it as well.
If Al Waleed fell, that would leave the Iraqi government without control of a single border crossing to Syria and would deal a blow to both Syria and Iraq. ISIS has been fighting the Syrian government for months and a loss of control over the border would allow the militants to move its fighters and equipment more freely between the two countries.
ISIS is trying to create an Islamic caliphate in a vast area of both countries, wiping out the border in between.
The government also said it was still battling to hold on to the Baiji oil refinery, the country’s biggest, not far from Kirkuk, and to retake the town of Tal Afar.
The prime minister’s top military spokesman, Gen. Qassim Atta, gave a news briefing in which he again insisted that the initiative had shifted to Iraqi government forces, contradicting most reports from the field so far.
Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, fell to the militants on June 10, and in the next three days they pushed to within about 60 miles of Baghdad, conquering most of the provinces of Nineveh and Salahuddin, as well as much of Diyala Province. In the past week, however, they appear to have concentrated on consolidating their gains, attacking cities and towns on the margin of the territory they overran, but not advancing closer to Baghdad.
The fighting between Sunni militants near Kirkuk, if confirmed, could pose a challenge to the militant coalition, which was able to advance so quickly into Iraq in part because of the combined forces. The Baathist group denied any such clash on their website.
According to the security official, who was in Kirkuk and spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Sunnis battling ISIS were from the Men of the Army of Naqshbandia, a group made of former Saddam Hussein loyalists, or Baathists. The two groups are allies of convenience with very different ideologies; the Baathists’ nationalistic, Sufi philosophy is completely at odds with ISIS’s extreme Islamist beliefs.
The battles took place in Hawija, one of the strongholds of the Naqshbandia. The security official said the fighting had broken out when ISIS tried to disarm the Naqshbandia, but an eyewitness from Hawija said they had been fighting over control of gasoline and oil tanker trucks captured from the refinery at Baiji.
The Naqshbandia group was active in antigovernment demonstrations in Hawija last year that ended with at least 42 people when the Iraqi army tried to disperse protesters. They have become a major component of the extremist Sunni coalition, at least partly because of their past military experience and the Baath Party’s deep roots in the Sunni community.
On its website, the Naqshbandia denied any problems with its allies. “We deny such news, we are in battle only with the occupiers of Iraq (Iran and the government),†the statement said. “It is clear that the government is doing this to get our army in an internal battle that will take us away from our main goal.â€
In Baghdad, as he has consistently done since the ISIS offensive advanced toward the capital, General Atta gave his televised briefing to Iraqi journalists but refused to take any questions from them.
“We will not let them take any foot of our earth,†General Atta said. He said the militants had been particularly hard hit by Iraqi airstrikes. “You should see how those ISIS run away when they hear even the sound of our air force,†he said. “It shows they are really afraid.â€
The general then played a video showing helicopter gunship airstrikes on groups of men running in the streets of Tal Afar who he said were ISIS fighters.
In a separate development, President Vladimir Putin of Russia called the embattled Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and offered Russia’s “full support for the Iraqi government’s efforts to liberate Iraqi territory from the terrorists’ hands as quickly as possible,†according to the Kremlin.
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