Reuters, Baghdad :
The United States is contemplating talks with its arch enemy Iran to support the Iraqi government in its battle with Sunni Islamist insurgents who routed Baghdad’s army and seized the north of the country in the past week.
The stunning onslaught by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant threatens to dismember Iraq and unleash all-out sectarian warfare across a crescent of the Middle East, with no regard for national borders that the fighters reject.
Joint action between the United States and Iran to help prop up the government of their mutual ally Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, would be a major breakthrough after hostility dating to Iran’s 1979 revolution, and demonstrates the degree of alarm raised by the lightning insurgent advance.
The ISIL fighters captured the mainly ethnic Turkmen city of Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq overnight after heavy fighting on Sunday, solidifying their grip on the north.
“The city was overrun by militants. Severe fighting took place, and many people were killed. Shi’ite families have fled to the west and Sunni families have fled to the east,” said a city official who asked not to be identified.
