Killing of Qaeda leaders 'won't end Iraq attacks'

Baghdad (AFP) - Washington is considering launching air strikes, possibly within days, to back up Iraqi and Shiite forces battling to recapture Tikrit from the Islamic State jihadist group, US officials said.

Al-Qaeda has confirmed the deaths of its top two Iraq commanders in a joint US-Iraqi military raid, a US monitoring group said, days after a wave of apparent revenge attacks killed 58 Iraqis.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, who had direct links with Osama bin Laden, were reported by Iraqi and US officials to have been killed in a shootout on April 18 near Tikrit in central Iraq.

ISIL’S high command has sent a senior Iraqi enforcer to head its outpost in Muammar Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte, Libyan intelligence officials have told The Daily Telegraph. The leader, a bespectacled man known only by the nom de guerre Abu Omar, has been ordered to tighten the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s grip on Sirte to prepare it as a possible bolthole for ISIL’s leaders in Syria and Iraq, the officials said.

BAGHDAD — Backed by allied Shiite, Sunni and Iranian fighters, Iraqi security forces launched a large-scale military operation Monday to recapture Saddam Hussein’s hometown from ISIS, a major step in a campaign to reclaim territory in northern Iraq controlled by the militants. But hours into the operation, a key test for the embattled Iraqi army, the military said it still hadn’t entered the city of Tikrit, indicating a long battle lies ahead.

Iraqi authorities said on Thursday that the arrest of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Baghdad chief six weeks ago triggered a series of events that culminated in the killing of the jihadist network's top commanders.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the political leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant and the insurgent group's self-styled "minister of war," died on Sunday, according to Iraqi and US officials.

The Al-Qaeda breakaway group that has seized much of northern Syria and huge tracks of neighbouring Iraq formally declared the creation of an Islamic state on Sunday in the territory under its control.

Washington (AFP) - US aircraft launched bombing raids to support Iraqi forces fighting to recapture Tikrit from the Islamic State group on Wednesday, after Baghdad issued a request for air power.

Saudi Arabia became the second key American ally in the Middle East to demand U.S. President Barack Obama change tack towards Iran Thursday, as it called for U.S.-led coalition “boots on the ground” to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham. At a meeting in Riyadh, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, he risked allowing Iran to “take over Iraq,” echoing Israel’s recent concerns over the White House’s policy toward Tehran.