Iraq slows rebel advance, US sends carrier to Gulf

An offensive by insurgents that threatens to dismember Iraq seemed to slow on Saturday after days of lightning advances as government forces regained some territory in counter-attacks, easing pressure on the Shia-led government in Baghdad. 

As Iraqi officials spoke of wresting back the initiative against Sunni militants, neighboring Shia Iran held out the prospect of working with its longtime US arch-enemy to help restore security in Iraq. 

US President Barack Obama said on Friday he was reviewing military options, short of sending troops, to combat the insurgency. The United States ordered an aircraft carrier moved into the Gulf on Saturday, readying it in case Washington decides to pursue a military option after insurgents overran areas in the north and advanced on Baghdad.

Ships like the USS George HW Bush, which are equipped with sophisticated anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles, are often used to launch airstrikes, conduct surveillance flights, do search, rescue, humanitarian and evacuation missions, and conduct seaborne security operations, a US defense official said. 

Thousands of Iraqis responded to a call by the country’s most influential Shia cleric to take up arms and defend the country against the insurgency, led by the Sunni militant Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.  In a visit to the city of Samarra, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to rout the insurgents, whose onslaught has put the future of Iraq as a unitary state in question and raised the specter of sectarian conflict. 

The militant gains have alarmed Maliki’s Shia supporters in both Iran and the United States, which helped bring him to power after invading the country and toppling former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003. 

Oil prices have jumped over fears of ISIL disrupting exports from OPEC member Iraq.

But having encountered little resistance in majority Sunni areas, the militants have now come up against the army, which clawed back some towns and territory around Samarra on Saturday with the help of Sha militia. 

‘We have regained the initiative and will not stop at liberating Mosul from ISIL terrorists, but all other parts,’ said Major-General Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military’s commander-in-chief, pointing out areas the army had retaken on a map with a laser pen. 

In the northeastern province of Diyala, at least seven members of the Kurdish security forces were killed in an airstrike, police said.  The secretary general of the Kurdish security forces said, however, that only two people had died near the town of Jalawla in what he described as shelling, and that it was not yet clear whether Iraqi forces or militants were responsible.