June 14, 2014: Iraqi Shiite fighters deploy with their weapons in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. (AP Photo/ Nabil Al-Jurani)
Iraq's security forces were able to halt the advance of Sunni Islamist militants north of Baghdad Saturday as thousands of Iraqi Shiites stood in line to join up with militias of their own.
However, the militants of the Al Qaeda splinter group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) appeared to be holding onto two key cities captured from Iraqi forces earlier this week.
Fighting was reported outside the town of Tikrit, less than 90 miles north of Baghdad. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iraqi soldiers are using the town of Samarra, about 10 miles south, as a jumping-off point for an assault that would re-take Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, from ISIS. The Journal also reported that ISIS fighters were using Saddam's well-reinforced presidential palaces as bases of operations as they fought with security forces in the southern parts of the city.
Elsewhere, The New York Times reported clashes in three cities in Salahuddin Province, just north of the capital, with inconclusive results.
However, the city of Mosul remained largely quiet on Saturday as ISIS fighters maintained their grip on the city. On Friday night, Iraqi government airstrikes targeted Iraqi military facilities that ISIS overran during its early morning conquest of the city on Tuesday.
Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's battle to regain control of his own country has been aided by the large numbers of Shiites who have responded to his and a prominent cleric's calls for ordinary citizens to wage war against ISIS in what is quickly becoming a sectarian fight.
"The Iraqi fighter is well known for his courage and valor, he has never been known to be defeated or deserted," Maliki's office said in a statement Saturday.
The Washington Post reported that recruitment centers had been set up in mosques and private homes in Baghdad. Busloads of people had poured into Baghdad from Iraq's heavily Shiite south to answer the call to jihad issued Friday by Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
The volunteers were first taken to an assembly center in eastern Baghdad, where they were handed military uniforms, and later went to Taji, home of Iraq's largest military base north of Baghdad, to undergo basic training. State-run television aired footage of the volunteers being drilled, still in their civilian clothes.
Dozens climbed into the back of army trucks, chanting Shiite slogans and hoisting assault rifles.
The mobilization unfolded against a backdrop of religious and nationalist fervor. State-run television aired a constant flow of nationalist songs, clips of soldiers marching or singing, as well as interviews with troops vowing to crush the militants. Other broadcasts included archival clips of the nation's top Shiite clerics and aerial shots of Shiite shrines.
Maliki, a Shiite widely resented by Sunnis for his perceived sectarian policies, denied the call by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani was directed against Sunnis, saying it was in fact meant to protect the country and its holy shrines.
"Talk of Sunnis and Shiites must be dropped," he said, calling for the unity of all Iraqis.
Many volunteers, however, said they had enlisted to protect their faith and shrines at risk in the city of Samarra north of Baghdad and elsewhere. The militants have threatened to march all the way south to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, home to two of the most revered Shiite shrines.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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