Mitchell Prothero

U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria are likely to last “for years,” a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday, as the United States began to assess the impact of three waves of aerial assaults launched in the early morning hours that targeted both Islamic State installations in eastern Syria and facilities housing a shadowy al-Qaida group further west.

The United States on Thursday took direct action for the first time to counter the Islamic State's advances in Iraq, dropping humanitarian supplies to tens of thousands of people who fled their homes when the extremist group captured the city of Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The Islamic State on Saturday released a video of what it said was its leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, directing Friday prayers in one of Mosul’s oldest mosques, a bold display not only of the group’s military control over Iraq’s second largest city but also of its claim to religious authority.

Iraq appeared closer to its long-predicted disintegration Thursday as Kurdish leaders ordered steps to hold a referendum “as soon as possible” on self-rule for their oil-rich territory and Islamist extremists improved their military position by seizing additional territory across the border in Syria.

Fighters from the Islamic State stormed into eastern Syria from their Iraq strongholds Thursday, overrunning or co-opting Syrian tribes and rebel groups holding the strategic towns along the border that control both the main highways and the bulk of Syria’s oil production.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki called Wednesday for support from neighboring countries in his government’s struggle against Islamist insurgents, saying the formation of an Islamic caliphate in much of Iraq and Syria threatens the entire region.

Hopes that Iraqi politicians would rapidly form a new government to help counter the advance of Islamist gunmen and win U.S. help were dashed on Tuesday after Sunni Muslim and Kurdish members of the Iraqi Parliament walked out of what was to have been their first session since elections in April.

The attack in Mosul wasn’t particularly surprising, according to Wameed, an Iraqi soldier who’d been assigned to the city’s main highway that night. It began June 9 with suicide bombers in cars and machine gun fire directed at checkpoints leading to the main thoroughfares of Iraq’s second largest city.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria announced Sunday the establishment of the Muslim caliphate and declared that its leader was Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the current head of ISIS.

The battle for Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit stretched into a third day Sunday with both the Iraqi government and Islamist insurgents reporting heavy loss as five jet fighters Iraq purchased from Russia arrived.

Iraqi Army units backed by Shiite militias battled Islamist insurgents for control of the Iraqi city of Tikrit for a second day on Saturday in a fight that’s critical to government efforts to regain control of the country.

Iraqi army commandos and Iranian-trained Shiite Muslim militias pressed their first significant counteroffensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Friday, battling Sunni insurgents in rebel-held Tikrit after a dramatic helicopter assault into the town Thursday afternoon.

Piling into a pickup truck with their AK-47 assault rifles, the Kurdish militia fighters were eager to show off the series of checkpoints they’d set up to guard the approaches to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Iraq’s dire situation has gone from bad dream to nightmare in two weeks of fighting that have seen Sunni Muslim gunmen assert control over a growing area, including, Kurdish officials said Tuesday, at least two towns that lie on a crucial supply route linking Baghdad, the capital, with the mostly Shiite Muslim south.

When the fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria swept aside Iraqi security forces in just two days of fighting to seize control of much of northern and central Iraq, it appears they also took control of the initiative in their fight in neighboring Syria, where they’ve seen recent successes against rivals who once considered them allies.