Half a million people on the move after gunmen seize four cities and pillage army bases and banks

Iraq is facing its gravest test since the US-led
invasion more than a decade ago, after its army
capitulated to Islamist insurgents who have
seized four cities and pillaged military bases
and banks, in a lightning campaign which seems
poised to fuel a cross-border insurgency
endangering the entire region.
The extent of the Iraqi army's defeat at the
hands of militants from the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria (Isis) became
clear on
Wednesday when officials in Baghdad conceded
that insurgents had stripped the main army
base in the northern city of Mosul of weapons,
released hundreds of prisoners from the city's
jails and may have seized up to $480m in
banknotes from the city's banks.
Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two
divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men
– simply turned and ran in the face of the
assault by an insurgent force of just 800
fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on
Wednesday through the streets of Mosul,
openly surprised at the ease with which they
took Iraq's second largest city after three days
of sporadic fighting.
Senior government officials in Baghdad were
equally shocked, accusing the army of betrayal
and claiming the sacking of the city was a
strategic disaster that would imperil Iraq's
borders.
The developments seriously undermine US
claims to have established a unified and
competent military after more than a decade of
training. The US invasion and occupation cost
Washington close to a trillion dollars and the
lives of more than 4,500 of its soldiers. It is
also thought to have killed at least 100,000
Iraqis.
Early on Thursday the Sites monitoring group
in the US said it had translated an audio
statement by an Isis spokesman declaring that
"the battle will rage in Baghdad and Karbala ...
put on your belts and get ready". The New
York Times, meanwhile, reported that Iraq last
month secretly asked Barack Obama to
consider bombing Sunni militant staging posts
in Iraq.