Islamist-led insurgents Sunday seized most of the town of Haditha in western Iraq, witnesses said, as the rebels surged into the western province of Anbar.
Haditha, some 260 kilometres west of the capital Baghdad, is located along the Euphrates River where fighters from the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the towns of Rawa and Ana earlier in the week.
The militants’ territorial gains in largely Sunni Anbar came after two days of battling government troops, who eventually abandoned their outposts, witnesses told dpa. Their account could not be independently verified.
ISIL already controls the town of Qaim in Anbar near Iraq’s border with Syria.
Earlier this year, the splinter al-Qaeda group ISIL, which is active in Syria, captured Fallujah, a key city of Anbar.
The radical Sunni group seized the northern town of Mosul in a blitz last week and then moved on to capture a string of towns stretching south towards Baghdad.
The government says its troops have since wrested back some areas from rebels.
On Sunday, a senior local official in the northern province of Salah al-Din was killed while fighting against ISIL militants, Iraqi media reported.
Umiya al-Jabara, an advisor to the province’s governor for women’s affairs, had recently volunteered to fight alongside government forces in response to calls by Shiite clerics.
She was killed during clashes near the northern town of Tikrit, which was seized by insurgents last week, independent news site Alsumaria News reported.
More than 2.5 million Shiites have reportedly volunteered across the country to take up arms and help the army defeat the jihadist group, according to government statistics.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered a monthly income of 500,000 dinars (about 447 dollars) for each volunteer, in addition to 125,000 dinars in food allowance.
The insurgents’ swift advances have raised international fears that Iraq is falling apart, making room for the emergence of a militant enclave. ISIL controls areas in eastern Syria along the border with Iraq.
Iraq has seen increasing violence over the past year, much of it blamed on ISIL and aimed at security forces and Shiite civilians.
The Shiite-led government’s response, with security sweeps and mass arrests, has alienated Iraq’s Sunni minority, from which ISIL and other rebel groups draw their support.