Iraq formally asks US to launch air strikes against rebels.

Alleged ISIS militants in the town of Baiji in recent days.

 

   

Shia women in the city of Najaf show their willingness to join Iraqi security forces in the fight against ISIS

Iraq has formally called on the US to launch air strikes against jihadist militants who have seized several key cities over the past week.

"We have a request from the Iraqi government for air power," confirmed top US military commander Gen Martin Dempsey in front of US senators.

Earlier the Sunni insurgents launched an attack on Iraq's biggest oil refinery at Baiji north of Baghdad.

Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki earlier urged Iraqis to unite against the militants.

Government forces are battling to push back ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and its Sunni Muslim allies in Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, after the militants overran the second city, Mosul, last week.

US President Barack Obama met senior Congress members on Wednesday to discuss the Iraq crisis. The White House said Mr Obama had "reviewed our efforts to strengthen the capacity of Iraq's security forces to confront the threat from ISIL [ISIS], including options for increased security assistance".

Ahead of the briefing Senate leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, said he did not "support in any way" getting American troops involved in the Iraqi "civil war".

But Gen Dempsey told a Senate panel that it was in America's "national interest to counter [ISIS] wherever we find them".

In other developments:

• UK Prime Minister David Cameron told Parliament in London that ISIS was also plotting terror attacks on Britain
• India confirmed that 40 of its citizens had been kidnapped in the violence-hit Iraqi city of Mosul
• Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal warned that Iraq faced the risk of civil war
• Turkey is investigating reports that 15 Turkish builders were abducted by ISIS on Tuesday; 80 Turks were kidnapped in Mosul last week

ISIS eyes lucrative Iraqi resources

A detailed look at what ISIS says about itself, in two annual reports, is very revealing.

Get past the gruesome audit of violence - the numbers of people they claim to have killed through car bombs, suicide attacks and even "apostates run over" - and a picture emerges of an "increasingly structured organisation", in the words of an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The statistics show a major ISIS focus, over the past two years, on Nineveh province, which may help to explain the Iraqi army's headlong flight from Mosul last week. More than 30% of ISIS attacks in both 2012 and 2013 were focussed on Nineveh, with a particular emphasis on threats against members of the Iraqi military and intimidation of local journalists.

But the reports suggest ISIS has nationwide ambitions, to take over large parts of the country. In the absence of a considered strategy, warn the authors of the ISW study, ISIS "will become a permanent fixture in the Middle East".