Story highlights The Iraqi air force killed more than 200 ISIS militants, according to Iraq state TV 
 
 U.S. may try to speak directly to Iran about deteriorating Iraq situation, senior U.S. officials say 
 
 Dozens of U.S. military personnel arrive at U.S. Embassy, a U.S. official says 
 
 Photos appearing online appear to show ISIS fighters executing Iraqi security forces 
 
 The Iraqi air force struck back at the militant group ISIS , the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, killing more than 200 militants, Iraqi state TV reported Monday morning. The air raids took place in Saqlawiyah, northwest of Fallujah, according to a graphic run by state TV. 
 
 ISIS has been ruthlessly fighting to take control of Iraq and has apparently posted chilling photos on jihadi Internet forums seeming to show the executions of Iraqi security forces. 
 
 CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of the images purportedly posted by ISIS . CNN is examining the terrain in the images, some of the signage on buildings in several of the pictures and the uniforms of the apparent victims. Those details suggest the photos are real and were taken in Iraq. 
 
 A caption on some of the images reads: "apostates heading to their hole of doom." 
 
 ISIS, an al Qaeda splinter group, wants to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, that would stretch from Iraq into northern Syria. The group has had substantial success in Syria battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's security forces. 
 
 On Friday, a tweet on what was claimed to be an ISIS Twitter account claimed that its members killed at least 1,700 Shiites. CNN was unable to verify the authenticity of the account, and the account appeared to have been taken down Sunday. 
 
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 In a statement, the U.S. State Department condemned the claim by ISIS, also known as ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. 
 
 "The claim by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that it has massacred 1700 Iraqi Shia air force recruits in Tikrit is horrifying and a true depiction of the bloodlust that these terrorists represent. While we cannot confirm these reports, one of the primary goals of ISIL is to set fear into the hearts of all Iraqis and drive sectarian division among its people," part of the statement read. "Terrorists who can commit such heinous acts are a shared enemy of the United States, Iraq, and the international community. " 
 
 The militants' quick advance in Iraq has been helped by many Sunnis who feel that the Shiite-dominated government has marginalized them. 
 
 ISIS seized Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, last week and has threatened to march on Baghdad, Iraq's capital and largest city. 
 
 But "Mosul didn't fall," a defiant Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told military leaders in Baghdad in a speech televised Sunday on state TV. "The ones who have fallen are the politicians who have bet against Iraq." The Prime Minister said, "We will not allow anyone to divide the Iraqi people." 
 
 Al-Maliki called on his top brass and soldiers to march and fight against ISIS, while criticizing Iraqi politicians conspiring against their homeland and Iraqi soldiers who have refused to continue to fight when confronted by ISIS. 
 
 "We will march on every inch, with all our weapons, with all our will and faith, so we can liberate and cleanse every inch of Iraq -- from the southernmost point to the furthest point in the north," he exhorted the military leaders. 
 
 Despite al-Maliki's bold statements, ISIS accumulated several victories across Iraq on Sunday. 
 
 The northwest Iraqi city of Tal Afar fell to ISIS, according to Iraqi Gen. Mohammed al-Quraishi. Many Tal Afar residents -- ethnic minority Shiite Turkmen -- fled the fighting north toward Iraq's Kurdish region. Tal Afar is in Nineveh province, midway between the country's border with Syria and Mosul, north of Baghdad. 
 
 Before Iraqi security forces lost Tal Afar, several mortar rounds landed on a busy area in the town and killed at least seven and wounded 33 people, security officials in Baghdad and Tal Afar told CNN. 
 
 Also Sunday, ISIS gained control of two villages in Adhaim, in its first push into Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. 
 
 On top of that, Iraqi security forces and gunmen believed to be ISIS clashed near al-Khalis, about 18 miles from Diyala's capital, Baquba, al-Khalis police officials told CNN. Three mortar rounds landed near a recruitment center opened recently for volunteers to help the Iraqi army fight against ISIS. 
 
 Baquba is about 37 miles northeast of Baghdad. Baquba is an ethnically-mixed city, though Sunnis represent a slight majority. 
 
 Given Baquba's proximity to Baghdad, if Baquba were to fall, it could give ISIS militants three-pronged access to Baghdad -- from Anbar province to the west, Ninevah and Salahuddin provinces to the north and from Diyala province from the northeast. 
 
 Meanwhile, on Sunday, CNN Senior International Correspondent Arwa Damon was in the Iraqi Kurdish province of Kirkuk, where last Thursday militants took control of two villages. 
 
 She asked the local governor, Dr. Najmaldin Karim, whether the United States should launch airstrikes to help fight back ISIS. 
 
 "I think they know how to do it, but blanket bombing is not going to work here," Karim said, explaining that that approach ignores the fact that ISIS is too blended into the civilian population in Kirkuk and innocent people could die. But there should be targeted bombing in both Iraq and Syria, he said. 
 
 "I don't think anyone is safe from these people," said Karim. 
 
 Partial staff relocation at U.S. Embassy 
 
 Between 50 and 100 U.S. Marines and U.S. Army personnel have arrived at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, a U.S. official told CNN on Sunday. 
 
 A U.S official acknowledged to CNN that the additional embassy security personnel being added include U.S. Marines who specialize in embassy protection during high-threat conditions. 
 
 The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. American military forces ended their withdrawal from the country in December 2011. 
 
 At the time of the U.S. drawdown, Iraq's leadership had agreed that a residual U.S. military presence was desirable, but the talks broke down over the prickly issue of legal immunity for U.S. troops in Iraq. 
 
 The Obama administration had said any deal to keep U.S. troops in Iraq beyond the withdrawal deadline would require a guarantee of legal protection for American soldiers. But the Iraqis refused to agree to that, opening up the prospect of American troops being tried in Iraqi courts and subjected to Iraqi punishment. 
 
 This week, President Barack Obama continued to consider options with regard to the situation in Iraq but ruled out sending troops into the country. 
 
 On Sunday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that some U.S. security personnel will be added to the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and other staff members will be temporarily relocated to consular offices in Basra and Irbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman, Jordan. 
 
 A "substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place," Psaki said in a statement, and "the Embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission." 
 
 Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that a "small number of Defense Department personnel" are augmenting State Department security assets in Baghdad. Kirby said that the relocation of some embassy personnel is being done with commercial, charter and State Department aircraft flights. 
 
 The U.S. military can airlift people if the State Department asks for that, Kirby said. 
 
 The State Department is warning U.S. citizens against "all but essential travel to Iraq." The official travel warning says U.S. citizens in Iraq "remain at high risk for kidnapping and terrorist violence." 
 
 While that continues, Iran has recently entered the fray, according to a senior security official in Baghdad who spoke to CNN on Friday. That official said that in recent days, Iran has sent about 500 Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops to fight alongside Iraqi government security forces in Iraq's Diyala province. 
 
 However, Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani , denied reports that some of its elite forces are in Iraq to help bolster al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite. 
 
 "If the Iraqi government wants us to help, we will consider it," Rouhani said, according to an English translation of his remarks Saturday in Farsi by state-run Press TV. 
 
 But, he said, "so far they have not asked specifically for help," and added that Iran could give strategic guidance if requested. 
 
 The Obama administration is exploring possible direct talks with Iran over the deteriorating situation in Iraq, two senior U.S. officials tell CNN. 
 
 Both officials ruled out any type of teaming up with Iran because the United States and Iran don't have a lot of common interests -- other than a stable Iraq. 
 
 The United States is wary of furthering Iran's already considerable influence in Iraq. The Shiite Iranian regime is al-Malaki's closest ally in the region. Additionally the administration is concerned appearing to team up with Iran would both alienate Iraq's Sunni majority and worry Sunni allies of the United States in the region. 
 
 The State Department statement said the United States "will do its part to help Iraq move beyond this crisis," and a senior State Department officer told CNN that Kerry spoke to his counterparts from Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to discuss the threat posed by ISIS. 
 
 The administration has not yet determined what the mechanism would be for talking to Iran, the senior U.S. officials said. 
 
 Ex-U.S. ambassador: Kerry should go to Iraq 
 
 On Sunday U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham argued on CNN's "State of the Union" for more intervention in Iraq. 
 
 The South Carolina Republican, a frequent critic of the Obama administration's approach to foreign policy, called Obama "stubborn-headed," "delusional" and "detached" over his decision on how to react to the unfolding crisis. 
 
 "Time is running out to turn this around," Graham said. "Get involved with air power. Stop the march toward Baghdad. Deal with Syria. But get a new government (in Iraq) in place as quickly as you can that will bring the Iraqis back together for a counteroffensive." 
 
 Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday that he thinks Secretary of State John Kerry should fly to Iraq immediately. 
 
 "We need the secretary of state out there in Baghdad right now," Crocker said. "We need the President on the phone to the Iraqi leadership because the reality is the Iraqis are not in a position ... they were not in a position when I was there, they are not in a position now, to work out hard compromises on their own." 
 
 The United States is the "middleman among Sunni, Shia and Kurds," Crocker said. "Ambassadors can go just so far." 
 
 Crocker, now the dean of the George Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University, said he would support "very carefully targeted airstrikes" in conjuction with high-level diplomacy. 
 
 "We have got to help the Iraqis come together," Crocker urged, "in a unified fashion to confront a common threat." ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 BAGHDAD — Wielding the threat of sectarian slaughter, Sunni Islamist militants claimed on Sunday that they had massacred hundreds of captive Shiite members of Iraq’s security forces, posting grisly pictures of a mass execution in Tikrit as evidence and warning of more killing to come. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The possible mass killing came as militants cemented control of the city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, after two days of fierce clashes with Iraqi troops, residents and senior security officials said. The city came under mortar attack, sending many residents fleeing toward Sinjar to the west and Mosul to the east. Residents said the militants freed dozens of prisoners. 
 
 Even as anecdotal reports of extrajudicial killings around the country seemed to bear out the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s intent to kill Shiites wherever it could, Iraqi officials and some human rights groups cautioned that the militants’ claim to have killed 1,700 soldiers in Tikrit could not be immediately verified. 
 
 But with their claim, the Sunni militants were reveling in an atrocity that if confirmed would be the worst yet in the conflicts that roil the region, outstripping even the poison gas attack near Damascus last year. 
 
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 In an atmosphere where there were already fears that the militants’ sudden advance near the capital would prompt Shiite reprisal attacks against Sunni Arab civilians, the claims by ISIS were potentially explosive. And that is exactly the group’s stated intent: to stoke a return to all-out sectarian warfare that would bolster its attempts to carve out a Sunni Islamist caliphate that crosses borders through the region. 
 
 The sectarian element of the killings may put more pressure on the Obama administration to aid Iraq militarily. In fact, the militants seemed to be counting on it. A pronouncement on Sunday by the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had a clear message for the United States: “Soon we will face you, and we are waiting for this day.” 
 
 The group’s announcement was made in a series of gruesome photographs uploaded to an ISIS Twitter feed and on websites late on Saturday night. Some showed insurgents, many wearing black masks, lining up at the edges of what looked like shallow mass graves and apparently firing their weapons into young men who had their hands bound behind their backs and were packed closely together in large groups. 
 
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 The photographs showed what appeared to be seven massacre sites, although several of them may have been different views of the same sites. In any one of the pictures, no more than about 60 victims could be seen and sometimes as few as 20 at each of the sites, although it was not clear if the photographs showed the entire graves. 
 
 The militants’ captions seemed tailor-made to ignite anger and fear among Shiites. “The filthy Shiites are killed in the hundreds,” one read. “The liquidation of the Shiites who ran away from their military bases,” read another, and, “This is the destiny of Maliki’s Shiites,” referring to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. 
 
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 Many of the captions mocked the victims. In one photograph, showing a group of young men walking toward an apparent execution site, where armed masked men awaited, the caption read, “Look at them walking to death on their own feet.” 
 
 So far, Iraq’s majority Shiites were not rising to the bait. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, their supreme religious leader, issued a statement on Saturday calling for all groups to “exert the highest possible level of self-restraint during this tumultuous period.” And there was little immediate public reaction to the ISIS claims in Baghdad or other southern Iraqi cities. 
 
 A senior Iraqi government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make press statements, said news of the executions was slow to circulate because Twitter and other social media sites had been blocked for days. “I don’t doubt they are real, but 1,700 is a big number,” he said. “We are trying to control the reaction.” 
 
 Acutely aware of the potential for retaliatory violence, some government officials who had heard about the ISIS claims took pains to play them down, confirming only that some executions had taken place in Tikrit, but not on a large scale. 
 
 One Iraqi security official claimed that no more than 11 bodies of executed soldiers were recovered from the Tigris River downstream from the execution site, a group of six and a group of five, although he confirmed that 800 soldiers had been taken prisoner in the area. He also reported finding 17 bodies washed up against a dam near Samarra, another city the militants are fighting for. But he said, “There is no such superstitious number as 1,700 people executed.” 
 
 An official statement posted on the Ministry of Defense’s website denied the executions had taken place at all. 
 
 Still, other officials and human rights representatives, while cautioning that they could not confirm the full 1,700 number being claimed, said that ISIS had shown no compunctions against hunting Shiites. And they reiterated that such horrific claims would go to further the group’s intent to sow chaos. 
 
 “We’re trying to verify the pics, and I am not convinced they are authentic,” said Erin Evers, the Human Rights Watch researcher in Iraq. “As far as ISIS claiming it has killed 1,700 people and publishing horrific photos to support that claim, it is unfortunately in keeping with their pattern of commission of atrocities, and obviously intended to further fuel sectarian war.” 
 
 Col. Suhail al-Samaraie, head of the Awakening Council in Samarra, a pro-government Sunni grouping, confirmed that officials in Salahuddin Province were aware that large-scale executions had taken place, but did not know how many. “They are targeting anyone working with the government side, any place, anywhere,” he said. He said the insurgents were targeting both Sunnis and Shiites, anyone with a government affiliation, but claiming for propaganda reasons that the victims were all Shiites. 
 
 A New York Times employee in Tikrit said local residents saw hundreds of Iraqi military personnel captured when they tried to flee Camp Speicher, a former American military base and airfield now used as an air force training center on the edge of Tikrit. It is still in government hands. 
 
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 Most of those captured were air force cadets, the employee said. Those who were Sunnis were given civilian clothes and sent home; the Shiites were marched and trucked off to the grounds of Saddam Hussein’s old palace in Tikrit, where they reportedly were executed. He added that the bodies had been dumped in the Tigris River, which runs by the palace compound. 
 
 The ISIS photographs appeared to have been taken at that location, the employee said. However, he said he had not spoken to any witnesses who claimed to have seen the executions or the victims’ bodies. 
 
 Ryan C. Crocker, a former ambassador to Iraq and a critic of America’s 2011 withdrawal from that nation after the two countries failed to sign a mutual security pact, said the atrocity claims, proven or not, made it more urgent than ever for Washington to become involved. 
 
 “What this administration has to do is get John Kerry on a plane right now, like we did when I was there, and sit down with Shia, Sunni and Kurdish leaders and help them get to a position of declared national unity. Iraqis have to stand together now,” Mr. Crocker said. Regarding the massacres, he said, “Whatever it is, however many people, it’s clearly an effort to ignite an Iraqi civil war.” 
 
 Political analysts here mostly agreed about the militants’ intent. “The problem now is that you are dealing with emotions and ISIS is trying to provoke the other side to take revenge,” said Ameer Jabbar al-Sa’aedi, a Baghdad-based analyst. “There are extremists among the Shia, too, and if they respond, they could begin killing and not exclude anyone. It would be just like what happened in 2006.” 
 
 Even though Ayatollah Sistani’s statement over the weekend was intended to call for restraint on the part of Shiites, it came after his call just a day before for every Iraqi to take up arms to support the government. 
 
 That appeal was expected to greatly accelerate the formation of volunteer groups to supplement Shiite militias — nominally to fight alongside the Iraqi Army. But during the worst of the sectarian bloodletting in Iraq, from 2005 through 2007, some such Shiite groups were deeply involved in violence that was killing as many as 1,000 civilians each week. 
 
 One militia leader, Abu Bakr al-Zubaidi, from a group called Asaib Al Haq, a hard-line offshoot of the Mahdi Army militia, said he was not surprised to hear of the executions. 
 
 “ISIS regards Shia as their eternal enemy, and they will kill whoever falls in their hands who is Shia, whether they are soldiers, grocers or even singers,” he said. “Our response to that is there will not be any living ISIS prisoner.” ||||| Earlier Monday, the United Nations said it had temporarily relocated 58 staff members from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan. Farhan Haq, a spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, told reporters in New York that more United Nations staff members might be moved in coming days. 
 
 The new setbacks for the Iraqi government added urgency to demands from Iran and the United States — which have now both signaled a new willingness to cooperate on the crisis — that Mr. Maliki move quickly to reach out to Sunnis and Kurds and forge a united front against the Sunni extremists, who in the past week have brought much of the north and west of the country under their control. 
 
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 Mr. Maliki has publicly declared his confidence that the volunteers would help fill gaps in his beleaguered military, which has been decimated by desertions. Young Shiite men have enthusiastically signed up throughout Baghdad and southern Iraq, racing to the front lines with little training or preparation, since Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, exhorted them on Friday to take up arms and defend the country. 
 
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 Yet the ambush, which occurred Sunday night near Samarra, about 70 miles north of Baghdad, raised questions about how effective such volunteers will be in fighting experienced insurgents. 
 
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 The volunteers had just left the northern town of Ishaqi and were heading south to reinforce Samarra, still held by the Iraqi Army but under pressure from Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which has threatened to destroy its historic Shiite shrine. An attack on that shrine in 2006, during the height of the American-led invasion that toppled the Hussein regime, provoked bloody sectarian warfare nationwide. 
 
 Hidden in a small convoy of refrigerator trucks for the perilous journey through territory where ISIS is active, the volunteers were hit with a roadside bomb, said a Shiite militia leader, Abu Mujahid. At the same time, he said, “the militants came from nowhere and started shooting from everywhere and killed 28 volunteers.” 
 
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 At the morgue of the hospital in Samarra, an official said 29 dead were brought there, and that a further 190 volunteers were wounded in the attack. Mr. Mujahid put the wounded at 17. 
 
 Farther north, the fall of Tal Afar followed a two-day battle between the Iraqi military and the insurgents. The militants have now gained control of another city on the road to Syria through Nineveh Province, after the fall less than a week earlier of the province’s capital, Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, about 35 miles to the east of Tal Afar. 
 
 The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria militants claimed that along with taking Tal Afar, they had captured the commander of Iraqi Army forces in the city, Gen. Abu al-Waleed, and planned to execute him in a square in central Mosul. Residents said the militants used bullhorns to call people to the execution, but it never took place. General Waleed’s voice was later heard on Iraqi state television disputing the insurgents’ claims. “I am in good health and on the battlefield and will announce victory over ISIS in all of the territory of Tal Afar in the next few hours,” the channel quoted him as saying. 
 
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 Residents of Tal Afar, which has a population of 200,000, said most Shiite families had fled west, toward Sinjar, while Sunnis had gone east, toward Mosul. 
 
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 One of the first clashes also erupted on Monday between ISIS fighters and members of the Kurdish pesh merga militia, who have sought to avoid each other. A pesh merga convoy on the Kirkuk-Tikrit highway inadvertently strayed into a no man’s land and encountered an ISIS checkpoint, which fired at the convoy and wounded at least one Kurdish militia member. The convoy then turned around. 
 
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 In Geneva, the top human rights official of the United Nations added her voice to the growing alarm over summary executions carried out by Sunni militants in Iraq, asserting they had killed more than a dozen religious leaders in Mosul. 
 
 The official, Navi Pillay, the high commissioner for human rights, also said her own sources had corroborated ISIS claims that its fighters had massacred hundreds of Shiite soldiers in recent days. 
 
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 “This apparently systematic series of coldblooded executions, mostly conducted in various locations in the Tikrit area, almost certainly amounts to war crimes,” Ms. Pillay said in a statement. 
 
 In the capital, Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, the spokesman for the Baghdad Operation Command, held a news briefing to announce that the authorities had killed 56 insurgents in areas of western and southern Baghdad. He also denied reports by Al-Hadath Television, part of the Saudi-owned Arabiya television network, that the insurgents had made strikes near Baghdad International Airport. 
 
 “The airport is functional, and everything is normal,” General Maan said, adding that the authorities wanted Al-Hadath to be shut down because of its reports. ||||| • Iraq crisis live: Isis attack Iraq's biggest oil refinery • US to send nearly 300 troops to Iraq as crisis escalates • Isis attack on Baquba, 37 miles from Baghdad, repelled overnight • Kurdish PM says return to pre-Isis attack Iraq 'impossible' • UK to reopen Iran embassy following talks over Iraq measures 
 
 00.50 We'll end our live covergae of developments in Iraq here for the night. Join us again in the morning here for more rolling reports and in the mean time you can visit our Iraq page for all the latest news, comment and analysis, including Ruth Sherlock 's dispatch from Carol Malouf near Tal Afar : 
 
 It was once the emblem of US military success in Iraq - the city where American forces defeated their adversaries twice. First they drove out the army of Saddam Hussein, and later the Islamist militants who rose up against the occupation. 
 
 Less than a decade later, the two US foes have joined forces to seize back Tal Afar, and the machine guns and armoured vehicles that American troops left behind to defend its new-found freedom are being used by the very insurgents they sought to defeat. 
 
 The arrival of the jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham in northern Iraq has brought on sectarian insurgency anew, and loyalists to the late Saddam Hussein have once again picked up their arms to fight. 
 
 23.40 Iraqi forces appear to be rallying and bolstering their defence of Baghdad in the face of the Sunni extremists - that's according to the Pentagonat least. 
 
 We also have reason to believe - certainly indications - that the Iraqi security forces are stiffening their resistance and their defense and are coalescing, particularly in and around Baghdad, and that's encouraging," spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said today. 
 
 With Iraqi troops now receiving help from Shiite volunteers, Kirby said "it certainly appears as if they have the will to defend the capital." 
 
 22.50 Washington remains open to more talks with Iran over the crisis in Iraq, but is far from following in Britain’s footsteps to renew diplomatic ties, a US official said today. 
 
 Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns had “met briefly” with Iranian officials on Monday in Vienna on the sidelines of nuclear talks with global powers, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed. 
 
 They discussed the need to support inclusivity in Iraq and the need to refrain from pressing a sectarian agenda,” she said. 
 
 “We’re open to continuing our engagement with the Iranians, just as we are engaging with other regional players on the threat posed by ISIL in Iraq.” 
 
 21.55 Iraqi Shi’ite and Sunni political leaders have made a joint call for national unity after a closed-door meeting was called in the wake of the recent sectarian violence. 
 
 The leaders, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi’ite, and Sunni Usama al-Nujaifi, the last speaker of parliament which dissolved this month, stood apart and listened as Maliki’s predecessor Ibrahim al-Jafaari called for “defending the state and protecting its sovereignty and dignity.” 
 
 They also called for avoiding sectarian grievances and forbade non-state actors from carrying weapons. 
 
 20.27 US congressional leaders are to meet President Barack Obama tomorrow in the White House to discuss the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, officials have said. 
 
 Democratic and Republican officials said that John Boehner, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, Harry Reid, the Senate Majority leader and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader - will sit down with the president at 3 pm (8pm UK). 
 
 The meeting is "a part of (Obama's) ongoing consultations with congressional leadership on foreign policy issues, including the situation in Iraq," a White House official said. 
 
 Mr McConnell "asked the president to provide us with a strategy and a plan and it's his hope that those will be provided at the meeting," a McConnell aide told AFP. 
 
 19.25 Watch David Cameron's remarks on Isis, which he warned earlier today posed the "biggest threat" to British national security: 
 
 19.00 The Telegraph's Damien McElroy reports on the use of social media by Isis to advance its aims - you can read the full article here. 
 
 He writes: 
 
 Analysts believe that Isis’s savvy use of internet tools has help spread its reputation and drive recruitment. Stratfor, the US think tank, said that Isis used the hashtag #SykesPicotOver during the advance - referring to the 1916 deal between British and French officials to carve up the Middle East into respective zones of influence. 
 
 "Isis is making effective use of startling images depicting their operations, notably including mass executions of Iraqi soldiers in Tikrit last week. Their fearsome reputation, bolstered by such images, has translated into success on the battlefield, with Iraqi security forces fleeing strategic towns and cities rather than engage the militants directly," said Jordan Perry, an analyst at risk advisory company Maplecroft. "It is very likely that intelligence agencies in Europe, the US and elsewhere are monitoring the online chatter of Islamist groups – including Isis – very closely indeed." 
 
 18.10 Amid widespread reports of violence perpetrated by Sunni Islamist Isis and its allies, primarily directed at the Shia population, signs of reprisals against Sunnis have begun to emerge. 
 
 Police said pro-government Shia militia killed nearly four dozen detainees after insurgents tried to storm a jail in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad. Earlier, The Telegraph spoke to a resident of Tal Afar, who said two of his cousins had been killed in the massacre but claimed prison security guards were responsible. 
 
 A local morgue official told AP that many of the detainees had bullet wounds to the head and chest. 
 
 In Baghdad the bullet-riddled bodies of four men in their late 20s or early 30s, believed to be Sunnis, were found at different locations in the Shia neighborhood of Benouk, according to police and morgue officials. 
 
 17.00 The Telegraph's Ruth Sherlock is in Iraq, where she has been speaking to refugees from Tal Afar, the northern city which was seized by Isis yesterday. 
 
 One resident said that two of his cousins had been killed in the prison massacre. He works in military intelligence, but refused to give his name out of fear of reprisal. 
 
 My cousins are from Borgholieh village in the Tal Afar area. They and four others from this village were in the prison. 
 
 My two cousins were shot dead and I am told their bodies have been burned. 
 
 The prison is run by the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Unit - the special forces. 
 
 Suddenly the prisoners were told they would be free to go and they opened the doors: the security guards wanted to show that the prisoners had "fled". 
 
 Once they were running out of the prison they shot them in their backs. They used a PKC to gun them down. 
 
 All the dead are Sunnis. I heard they tried to burn their bodies after. A friend of mine gave me this information. He was there also. They shot him in the stomach but he managed to get away. He is now in Mosul with his family. 
 
 Isis supporters wave al-Qaeda flags in Mosul (AP) 
 
 16.50 British citizens and other nationals fighting alongside Islamist insurgents in Iraq and Syria pose the biggest threat to Britain's national security that exists today, David Cameron has said. 
 
 "No-one should be in any doubt that what we see in Syria and now in Iraq in terms of Isis is the most serious threat to Britain's security that there is today," Cameron told a joint news conference with Chinese premier Li Keqiang. 
 
 "The number of foreign fighters in that area, the number of foreign fighters including those from the UK who could try to return to the UK is a real threat to our country," he said. 
 
 Stefan Rousseau/ PA 
 
 16.42 Iraqi Shia volunteers who went to fight for Assad's regime against the mainly Sunni rebels are returning in droves to their homeland to join the battle against Isis, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said. 
 
 Many had volunteered to defend the Sayyida Zeinab mosque, a revered Shiite shrine in southeast Damascus, from rebels based in the outskirts of the Syrian capital. But in the wake of the Isis offensive the volunteers have begun heading home in response to a rallying cry by top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, according to the monitoring group. 
 
 Iraqi volunteers headed home from the Mleiha area, southeast of Damascus, it said. 
 
 Their positions were taken over by fighters of Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has also intervened heavily alongside Assad's forces in Syria's civil war, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said. 
 
 "The Iraqi pro-Assad fighters' pullout from the Mleiha area was accompanied by a relative lull in the fighting around there," he told AFP. 
 
 "But that does not mean the regime has been left defenceless, as Hezbollah has deployed new troops to fill the gap." 
 
 Iraqi men flash victory signs as they leave the main recruiting centre to join the Iraqi army in Baghdad (AP) 
 
 16.19 Police in Iraq said a roadside bomb exploded in central Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least three people and wounding nine. 
 
 The blast took out a chunk of the pavement at the side of the busy road. Battered remains of market goods are strewn around. 
 
 Isis jihadists have pledged to seize the capital city, though they were repelled overnight in their attempt to take Baquba - at just 37 miles northeast of Baghdad, the closest they have so far come. 
 
 16.06 As the Isis offensive on Baghdad rages on, take a look at our updated Iraq crisis map (click to enlarge) to see where the latest frontline and fighting is taking place: 
 
 15.28 The contrast in the use of Twitter between the West's traditional foe Iran - whose president was pictured watching his country's World Cup opener in a tracksuit - and the Isis jihadists could not be more profound, writes Robert Tait, our Middle East Correspondent. 
 
 Hassan Rouhani cuts a benign, non-threatening figure as he watches the World Cup on television fortified with that most British of beverages – the cup of tea. 
 
 The image, posted on the Iranian president’s Twitter page, is a radical departure from the macabre yet similarly football-themed use of social media by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis) to show off its gruesome handiwork in Iraq. 
 
 The jihadist group, a relentless user of Twitter, posted pictures of atrocities committed in Iraq in recent days – including one resonant image of a group of men, one of whom is wearing a Manchester United shirt, herded together shortly before they are killed. 
 
 Mr Rouhani may not have been trying to score an international propaganda coup by having himself pictured watching Iran take on Nigeria wearing a T-shirt and track suit trousers – but he surely has done so. 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: Hassan Rouhani - Proud of our boys who secured our first point--hopefully the first of many more to come. <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23WorldCup2014" target="_blank">#WorldCup2014</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23TeamMelli" target="_blank">#TeamMelli</a> <a href="http://t.co/9pzyT1Dr3f" target="_blank">http://t.co/9pzyT1Dr3f</a></noframe> 
 
 15.00 Isis may enjoy backers in Saudi Arabia - and other Gulf kingdoms - but this does not mean the jihadist group enjoys the support of the kingdoms' rulers, says this blog in NOW magazine: 
 
 It’s unquestionably the case... that the Gulf monarchs make little if any real effort to prevent their more pious subjects from sending considerable sums of money to extremist outfits, including Isis. 
 
 But this is not the same as saying... that Isis is actively and deliberately sponsored as a matter of policy by the Saudis and other Gulf rulers and should be thought of as no more than a proxy created to advance Riyadh’s regional ambitions. 
 
 Quite to the contrary: Isis has long been at war with Saudi’s actual clients in Syria... 
 
 Isis spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani mocks the Kingdom [Saudi Arabia] as a “state which claims to be Islamic,” and denounces as traitors all factions “supported by the Saudis, America, and the infidels of the West.” 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: Michael Weiss - The KSA=ISIS crowd don't seem to know, consider or explain that ISIS wants to overthrow the Saudi government: <a href="https://t.co/4XQzv84qmQ" target="_blank">https://t.co/4XQzv84qmQ</a></noframe> 
 
 14.42 Proposed Western cooperation with Iran over a solution to the jihadist campaign in Iraq has caused plenty of controversy, especially in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia. 
 
 Former British foreign secretary Jack Straw does appear to share those concerns, according to Damien McElroy, our Foreign Affairs Correspondent: 
 
 <noframe>Twitter: Damien McElroy - Jack Straw says <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23Iran" target="_blank">#Iran</a> is not a "serious adversary" and the restoration of ties would send a message to Saudi Arabia <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23GSF" target="_blank">#GSF</a></noframe> 
 
 14.19 UNESCO has voiced its fears over threats to Iraq's cultural heritage amid the current violence, the worst in years as Isis jihadists overrun vast swathes of the country. 
 
 Destroying religious sites would amount to war crimes, the UN's cultural organisation warned. 
 
 "I call on all actors to refrain from any form of destruction of cultural heritage, including religious sites," General Irina Bokova, UNESCO direcotr, said in a statement. 
 
 After US forces invaded in 2003, at least 32,000 items were looted from 12,000 archeological sites across Iraq and 15,000 other items stolen from the National Museum. 
 
 A security officer walks through the Assyrian hall at the Iraqi National Museum (AFP/GETTY) 
 
 13.52 5,000 Iranians have pledged to defend Iraq's Shia Muslim holy sites against Isis extremists on the website harimshia.org. 
 
 Harishma was set up by a group naming itself the Popular Headquarters for the Defence of Shiite Shrines. 
 
 "Those who sign up are organised into units... and if the order is given by the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] they will go to Iraq to defend the sites," the harimshia.org page said. 
 
 13.39 Thousands of Shia Iraqis continue to flee the Isis offensive toward the relative safety of the Kurdish autonomous region in the country's northeast. 
 
 The below images are from Aski Kalak, a city midway between Mosul - Iraq's second city, seized by Isis last week - and the major Kurdish city of Erbil. 
 
 Displaced Iraqis queue to register at a temporary camp in Aski Kalak (AFP/GETTY) 
 
 13.25 Iran's role in the Iraq crisis and measures against Isis has picked up with the arrival in Iraq of the commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani. 
 
 Interestingly, the US government was notified in advanced of the visit by Soleimani. 
 
 Soleimani is no favourite of the Americans, having previously been linked with moves to organise Shia militias targetting US troops in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, as well as more recently providing assistance to Syria's president Bashar Assad. 
 
 Ghasem Soleimani (REX) 
 
 13.01 Saudi Arabia is "siding with terrorism", according to a strongly worded statement made by the Iraq cabinet. 
 
 AFP has this report on unverified claims made by the government of Iraq that Saudi Arabia is responsible for funding received by the Isis jihadists, and should be held responsible for the terrorists' actions: 
 
 Saudi Arabia should be held responsible for militant financing and crimes committed by insurgent groups in Iraq, the Baghdad government charged on Tuesday. 
 
 Comments from Riyadh indicates it is "siding with terrorism", the cabinet said in a statement issued by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office. 
 
 "We strongly condemn this stance," the statement read. 
 
 "We hold it (Saudi Arabia) responsible for what these groups are receiving in terms of financial and moral support." 
 
 It continued: "The Saudi government should be held responsible for the dangerous crimes committed by these terrorist groups." 
 
 The statement came just days after Saudi Arabia and Qatar blamed "sectarian" policies by Iraq's Shiite-led government against the Sunni Arab minority for the unrest that has swept the country. 
 
 The unrest "could not have taken place if it was not for the sectarian and exclusionary policies implemented in Iraq over the past years that threatened its stability and sovereignty," the Saudi government said in a statement. 
 
 In March, Maliki accused both Saudi Arabia and Qatar of supporting terrorism in Iraq. 
 
 12.19 At leat 44 prisoners being held at a police station were killed in the overnight Isis assault on Baquba, a city close to Baghdad, officials have said. 
 
 Accounts varied over whether they had been killed by jihadists carrying out the assault, or security forces trying to prevent them from escaping. 
 
 11.43 The Isis jihadists' attack on Baquba (see 09.25) overnight represents the closest that fighting has come to the capital Baghdad so far. 
 
 The assault on Baquba - 37 miles northeast of Baghdad - was repelled by security forces. 
 
 The jihadists have said they intend to march on Baghdad and the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala. 
 
 The swift advance of the militants has sparked international alarm, with UN envoy to Baghdad Nickolay Mladenov warning that Iraq's sovereignty is at stake. 
 
 "Right now, it's life-threatening for Iraq but it poses a serious danger to the region," Mladenov told AFP. 
 
 "Iraq faces the biggest threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity" in years, he added. 
 
 Iraqi Shiite gunmen carry weapons during a demonstration in Baghdad's Shuala district (EPA) 
 
 11.32 The prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Nechirvan Barzani, has said it is "almost impossible" for Iraq to return to its pre-Isis offensive state. 
 
 The various factions - Iraqi Sunni and Shia as well as Kurdish - needed to "sit down and find a way to live together", but the country cannot stay together as it was, he told the BBC. 
 
 Isis has made major territorial gains since seizing Mosul last week, while the Kurds have also occupied key locations not previously part of their autonomous region, including Kirkuk, since the Iraqi army fled in the face of the Sunni jihadists' assault. 
 
 11.19 Video has emerged of hundreds of Shia volunteers in Baghdad signing up to join the fight against Islamic militants in Iraq. 
 
 The volunteers, who have pledged to join the nation's beleaguered security forces to battle against Sunni militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or Isis, gathered at the Federal Police Command headquarters in the Iraqi capital. 
 
 They then set off in a convoy of trucks and buses towards the front line. 
 
 10.55 Iraq's biggest oil refinery, Baiji, has been shut down and its foreign staff evacuated, refinery officials said on Tuesday, adding that local staff remain in place and the military is still in control of the facility. 
 
 Isis jihadists have advanced into the oil refinery town of Baiji and surrounded the refinery. 
 
 Global oil prices have shot up since the Isis offensive in Iraq began, but dropped slightly on Tuesday with the announcement of US troops being deployed in the country. 
 
 Isis supporters wave al-Qaida flags in Mosul (AP) 
 
 10.26 William Hague has said the "circumstances are right" to reopen Britain's embassy in Iran. 
 
 The comments follow talks this weekend between Hague, the British foreign secretary, and his Iranian counterpart over cooperation on the Iraq crisis. 
 
 10.06 Fighting in Syria between Isis and the Assad regime appears to have restarted after a two-week hiatus. 
 
 Isis was initially welcomed by anti-government rebels in the Syrian civil war, but its abuses and ambitions for an Islamic caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq quickly alienated its erstwhile allies there. 
 
 While Isis has been pushed out of the northern Syrian regions around Aleppo, it retains a strong presence in Raqa, Hasakey and Deir Ezzor. 
 
 Fighting was reported in Deir Ezzor on Monday night, as well as a car bomb in Shmeytiyeh village, targeting a base belonging to Al-Nusra and Islamist rebel brigades fighting Isis. Six are reported dead. 
 
 
 
 Map showing Deir Ezzor in relation to northern Iraq 
 
 10.00 Iraqi state news channel "Iraqiya" has said that the army killed two Isis commanders on Tuesday. It did not say where in Iraq. More details to follow 
 
 09.49 We also have reports of another repelled Isis attack, this time on the northern Iraq village of Basheer, some nine miles south of the Kurdish city of Kirkuk. 
 
 Like Tal Afar, which fell to jihadists yesterday, Basheer is predominantly inhabited by Shia ethnic Turkmens. 
 
 Isis jihadists were beaten back from Basheer by a mixture of local militia and police forces, after the Iraqi army fled the region some days ago, according to reports. 
 
 Shiite tribal fighters raise their weapons and chant slogans against Isis (AP) 
 
 09.35 More details on the decision by US president Barack Obama last night to send troops into Iraq, albeit on a limited basis, by Damien McElroy, our Foreign Affairs Correspondent: 
 
 The US national security council held a late night session to consider options for military action to support Iraq's government hours after US and Iranian officials discussed cooperation on stabilising the region. 
 
 President Obama has made U.S. action contingent on Nouri al-Maliki broadening his Shia-dominated government. 
 
 "The President will continue to consult with his national security team in the days to come," the White House said, without elaborating. 
 
 Among those attending the meeting were Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, CIA Director John Brennan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey. 
 
 09.28 William Hague, the British foreign secretary, is expected to announce this afternoon that the British embassy in Tehran will reopen. 
 
 Full diplomatic relations were suspended after attacks on the British embassy in Iran in 2011. 
 
 A Iraqi young boy and tribesmen hold up their weapons as they gather to show their readiness to join Iraqi security forces (AFP/GETTY) 
 
 09.25 An overnight attack took place in the centre of Baquba, capital of Diyala provinnce, and according to the officers, saw militants temporarily occupying several neighbourhoods. 
 
 Militants attacked and took control of parts of the central Iraq city of Baquba but security forces eventually repelled the assault on Tuesday, army and police officers said. 
 
 Baqubah is around 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. 
 
 09.20 Iraqi government forces still hold parts of the northern town of Tal Afar, in Nineveh province, which was largely seized by Isis jihadists yesterday, according to deputy provincial council chief Nuriddin Qabalan. 
 
 08.45 Video footage has been released of the comments made yesterday by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who said America is willing to talk with Iran over ways the two long-time foes might help stop the insurgents known as Isis. In an interview with Yahoo! News, Kerry said Washington is "open to discussions" with Tehran if the Iranians can help end the violence and restore confidence in the Iraqi government. 
 
 Today is the second day of critical nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers including the US and Britain, with just five weeks until a July 20 deadline to reach a deal and gaps between the two sides seemingly still huge. Talks on Iraq have reportedly taken place on the sidelines of the conference. 
 
 08.25 Cold blooded "executions" said to have been carried out by militants in northern Iraq almost certainly amount to war crimes, the United Nations said on Monday. Richard Spencer reports for the Telegraph from Erbil, Iraq: 
 
 After the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis) released graphic photographs of its fighters shooting scores of young men, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, voiced shock over the bloodshed. 
 
 Isis claims to have executed 1,700 people after capturing the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Ms Pillay said the figure could not be verified, but added: "This apparently systematic series of cold-blooded executions, mostly conducted in various locations in the Tikrit area, almost certainly amounts to war crimes." 
 
 Navi Pillay (REUTERS) 
 
 08.00 About 100 additional US forces are being put on standby, most likely in Kuwait, and could be used for airfield management, security and logistics support, officials said. 
 
 Separately, three U.S. officials said the White House was considering sending a contingent of special forces soldiers to Iraq. Their limited mission - which has not yet been approved - would focus on training and advising beleaguered Iraqi troops, many of whom have fled their posts across the nation's north and west as the al-Qaida-inspired insurgency has advanced in the worst threat to the country since American troops left in 2011. 
 
 07.47 The survival of Nouri al-Maliki's democratically elected government is of crucial importance to the West, our leader argues this morning: 
 
 Mr al-Maliki, whose failure to address Iraq’s long-standing sectarian divisions has helped create the current crisis, clearly does not enjoy a high level of support in London and Washington. But that is no justification for allowing events to take their bloody course in the hope that Mr al-Maliki will prevail. Where Britain’s national interests are concerned, making sure Iraq’s democratically elected government survives the current crisis is far preferable to the barbarous, Islamist alternative. 
 
 Read the full leader here: It is in Britain’s interests to secure a stable Iraq 
 
 07.30 Good morning and welcome to our live blog of events in Iraq, where Isis have continued to gain ground against Maliki's government forces. 
 
 Last night US president Barack Obama notified Congress that up to 275 troops would be sent to Iraq to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the American Embassy in Baghdad. 
 
 The soldiers - 170 of which have already arrived in Iraq - were armed for combat, though Obama has insisted he does not intend for U.S. forces to be engaged in direct fighting. ||||| The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and two other U.S. Navy ships arrived in the Persian Gulf Sunday, as Iraqi troops mobilized to protect their country from a wave of Sunni insurgents taking over cities, and threatening the nation's capital. 
 
 The USS George H.W. Bush — accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun — was ordered to the Persian Gulf Saturday to protect American lives and interests in the region. 
 
 Meanwhile the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) launched a raid on Tal Afar, a town near the Syrian border, according to security forces and a local official. The Sunni insurgents have already seized several towns and were advancing toward Baghdad. 
 
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 President Barack Obama said Friday he would not send troops back to Iraq, but he was consulting with his national security team to "prepare a range of other options." 
 
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 Obama urged the Iraqi government to deploy its own troops to defend their nation, and Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday that U.S. assistance would only be effective if Iraqi leaders put aside their differences to combat the surge of attacks. 
 
 A call by the country's most influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for Iraqis to defend their country sparked an uprising of Shiite men to pick up their arms and push back the Sunni militants, which seemed to slow their progression toward Baghdad. 
 
 Assault on #baghdad stalled as govt and #shiite militias take up arms. #iraq — Richard Engel (@RichardEngel) June 15, 2014 
 
 The turmoil is far from over though, as a suicide attacker detonated explosives in the center of Baghdad Sunday, killing at least nine people and wounding 20, according to police. 
 
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 And a series of pictures distributed on what purported to be an ISIS Twitter account showed gunmen from the terrorist group shooting dozens of unarmed men. The authenticity of those pictures has not been independently verified by NBC News. 
 
 Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed to defeat the rebel fighters. 
 
 U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday said that the United States needs Iran's involvement to prevent a catastrophe in Iraq. 
 
 "We are probably going to need their help to hold Baghdad," Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on CBS' "Face the Nation." 
 
 "The Iranians have an interest. They have Shia populations to protect. We need a dialogue of some kind," he said. 
 
 — Elisha Fieldstadt, with Reuters ||||| Members of the all-volunteer Iraq of Imam Hussein Regiment take up positions on a street corner as part of a basic-training course in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala. Shiite men have been ordered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s highest Shiite authority, to protect Shiite shrines and help counter the recent gains of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni insurgent group. 
 
 June 28, 2014 Members of the all-volunteer Iraq of Imam Hussein Regiment take up positions on a street corner as part of a basic-training course in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala. Shiite men have been ordered by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country’s highest Shiite authority, to protect Shiite shrines and help counter the recent gains of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni insurgent group. Scott Nelson/For The Washington Post 
 
 Members of an all-volunteer force undergo training in the holy city of Karbala to protect Shiite shrines and help counter the recent gains of the Sunni insurgent group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. 
 
 Secretary of State John F. Kerry conferred with Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq as fighters from local Sunni tribes wrested control of at least part of Iraq’s largest oil refinery after battling for days with government troops over the key facility. 
 
 Secretary of State John F. Kerry conferred with Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq as fighters from local Sunni tribes wrested control of at least part of Iraq’s largest oil refinery after battling for days with government troops over the key facility. 
 
 Syrian government aircraft bombed Sunni militant targets inside Iraq on Tuesday, further broadening the Middle Eastern crisis a day after Israeli warplanes and rockets struck targets inside Syria. 
 
 Iraqi state media initially reported that the attacks near Iraq’s western border with Syria were carried out by U.S. drones, a claim that was quickly and forcefully denied by the Pentagon. 
 
 Separately, the Pentagon said that 90 additional U.S. troops arrived in Iraq, part of a group of up to 300 military advisers that President Obama said last week he would deploy there to assess the situation before taking any further U.S. military action. A statement said that U.S. aircraft are now flying 30 to 35 manned and unmanned daily surveillance flights over Iraq. 
 
 Reuters reported early Wednesday that militants had attacked one of Iraq’s largest air bases, a site near the town of Yathrib that was once know as “Camp Anaconda” when U.S. troops were present. The news agency said the base had been surrounded on three sides and was under mortar fire from the militants. 
 
 The main U.S. effort Tuesday was on the diplomatic front, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry traveled to Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, to urge leaders there to remain part of Iraq. As they met, fighters from local Sunni tribes, apparently working with militant fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), wrested control of at least part of Iraq’s largest oil refinery from government troops. 
 
 “We are facing a new reality and a new Iraq,” Massoud Barzani, president of the semi­autonomous Kurdish government, told Kerry at the start of their meeting. 
 
 An independent country is a long-held goal for many in Iraq’s Kurdish minority, numbering about 6.5 million. Some Kurdish leaders see an opportunity in the rapid advance of the insurgents and the slow, disorganized response by the Arab, Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. 
 
 Throughout his visit to Iraq, including in talks with Maliki and Sunni leaders Monday in Baghdad, Kerry has argued that Iraq risks collapsing unless a new governing coalition representing all sects and ethnicities is quickly formed. 
 
 That argument is harder to make in the Kurdish region, which has several vast oil fields and a long history of at least partial self-rule. The Kurds also have their own defense force, the pesh merga, separate from the Iraqi military that largely melted away in the face of advancing ISIS forces. 
 
 This month, as the ISIS militants overran the northwestern city of Mosul and headed south, pesh merga forces quickly secured the oil capital of Kirkuk, which lies just outside the official regional borders but which Kurds have long demanded be included in their territory. 
 
 Possible Kurdish secession 
 
 U.S. officials traveling with Kerry, who arrived late Tuesday in Brussels for a NATO meeting, said he had raised the question of possible Kurdish secession during his hour-long session with Barzani, but that most of their discussion focused on strategy to form a new Iraqi government. 
 
 In an interview, Kerry was asked about Barzani’s “new reality” remark. 
 
 “A united Iraq is a stronger Iraq, and our policy is to respect the territorial integrity of Iraq as a whole,” Kerry told NBC. “President Barzani understands that” and will participate in the government formation process, he said. Iraq has until Monday to form a new parliament following elections in April; parliament will then choose a new government. 
 
 The United States has long feared that formation of an independent Kurdistan in present-day Iraq would not only weaken Iraq but also set off secession attempts or civil war in neighboring nations with Kurdish minorities. 
 
 Meanwhile, Iraqi news media reported that at least 20 people were killed and 93 injured in the strike by Syrian jets in an Iraqi border town controlled by ISIS. Western officials who confirmed the attack said they had no casualty details on the strike, which targeted a market in the town of Qaim, according to the nongovernment National Iraqi News Agency. 
 
 On Monday, Israeli warplanes and rockets struck nine targets, including what the Israel Defense Forces said was a Syrian military command headquarters, in retaliation for a missile attack from Syria on Sunday that killed one Israeli and wounded another in the Golan Heights. 
 
 ISIS militants are fighting the governments on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border, and an apparent decision by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to intervene to help Maliki further tangles the already complex knot of actors in the overlapping crises. 
 
 In Syria, the United States opposes both Assad and ISIS, which it condemns as a terrorist, al-Qaeda-inspired organization. 
 
 Iran supports both Assad and Maliki and is sending aid to both, although Iraq’s ambassador to Tehran on Tuesday denied reports that the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was in Baghdad helping the government there, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported. 
 
 Meeting in Paris 
 
 Shiite leaders in Iran and Iraq, as well as Assad, have accused Sunni governments in the Persian Gulf of aiding the militants. On Thursday, Kerry will meet in Paris with his counterparts from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to ask them to intervene more forcefully with Sunni tribes in western Iraq to sever all ties with ISIS and join efforts to preserve a unified Iraq. 
 
 Armed tribal factions apparently worked together with ISIS forces to seize the oil refinery in Baiji, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, after days of battles with government troops over the key facility. 
 
 There were conflicting accounts late Tuesday of who was in charge at the facility. Iraqi soldiers who arrived in Irbil after fleeing the refinery Monday night said ISIS fighters spearheaded the assault, along with the al-Kaisi tribe that dominates in the region. A tribal council official said Tuesday that “we now control 90 percent of the refinery.” 
 
 The Baghdad government insisted it was still in control, but refinery workers said the tribes had negotiated a cease-fire and the surrender of about 450 Iraqi army officers. Some took off their uniforms and put on blue refinery coveralls before leaving, according to the workers’ account, and the tribes arranged for buses to take them away. 
 
 According to an official of the Baiji branch of the Military Council of the Revolutionary Tribes, a Sunni self-defense organization that includes the al-Kaisi tribe and other clans in the area, about 50 government troops remain holed up in one part of the refinery. 
 
 The official, who gave his name as Khalid al-Iraqi, said tribal fighters were joined by a smaller number of ISIS insurgents in the attack. He said the Military Council controls the refinery and described ISIS as not strong enough in the area to give orders. 
 
 But two Iraqi soldiers who took part in the defense, interviewed on the outskirts of Irbil after having fled Baiji, said that ISIS fighters had done most of the attacking. 
 
 “This really is a crisis,” said a Western diplomat in Iraq, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set for a news briefing. “It poses questions as to Iraq’s continued existence as a state. What we’ve got is Sunnis controlling Sunni territory, Shias controlling Shia territory, Kurds controlling Kurdish territory.” 
 
 Gearan reported from Irbil and Brussels, Van Heuvelen from Irbil. Abigail Hauslohner in Kirkuk, Iraq, and Loveday Morris and Liz Sly in Baghdad contributed to this report.
– As fighting rages today across Iraq, Washington is beginning to take action. About 50 to 100 Marines and Army personnel are now at the US embassy in Baghdad, and some embassy staff have been moved to other consular offices in Iraq and Jordan, CNN reports. Meanwhile, US Navy ships including the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush have arrived in the Persian Gulf, NBC News reports. And the Wall Street Journal reports that the US is planning to begin direct talks with Iran this week about ways of curbing Sunni militants in Iraq. In other news: The militants who seized much of western and northern Iraq say they've recently executed 1,700 people, the New York Times reports. No official confirmation yet, but the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria posted gruesome images of massacre sites on Twitter. Most victims are reportedly Shiite Iraqi soldiers, but Sunnis affiliated with the government were among the dead. The Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani revised the call to arms he issued Friday, apparently concerned about a possible wave of Sunni/Shiite reprisal killings. He urged Iraqis "to exert the highest level of self-restraint during this tumultuous period." Militants clashed with security forces near al-Khalis, northeast of Baghdad, and took over the town of Tal Afar, near the Syrian border. Sunni residents in Tal Afar say Shiite forces bombed their neighborhoods with mortar fire, Reuters reports. Two bomb attacks today killed up to 21 people in central Baghdad, one in a market full of volunteers assembled to join the fight against militants, the New York Times reports. See where ISIS militants came from, or how they became "insanely wealthy."