US jets and drones carried out air-strikes outside Erbil in an effort to drive back the ISIS advance on the Kurdish regional capital, while Iraqi warplanes struck near Mosul.
In authorizing US air-strikes in northern Iraq, President Obama invoked the responsibility to protect the Yazidis from ISIS and avert a potential "genocide."
The Kurdish Regional Government appeals to Obama for arms to fight ISIS—while Baghdad demands the Kurds return arms seized from its own disintegrating national army.
Iraq's government persuaded a US judge to order the seizure of $100 million of oil in a tanker anchored off Galveston that it claims was illegally pumped in Kurdistan.
The ISIS militants that have seized Mosul are engaged in a campaign of cultural cleansing—targeting not only the citiy's inhabitants, but its artistic and historical treasures.
Fighting erupted between ISIS and militants of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order in Kirkuk governorate, as the Sunni rebel coalition that has seized a third of Iraq starts to fray.
Iraq's contested northern city of Kirkuk was taken by Kurdish forces after being abandoned by the army—while the ISIS offensive is halted just 75 miles outside Baghdad.
An estimated half a million people have fled Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, since it was seized by ISIS forces—who have since taken Tikrit and are advancing on Baghdad.
Workers in several Iranian industrial centers marched on May Day in defiance of official attempts to shut them down, protesting labor repression and non-payment of wages.
Iraq's oil production surged to its highest level in over 30 years last month—as insurgent and terrorist attacks claim more lives than at any time since 2007.
Qaeda-aligned insurgent group ISIS destroyed a Sufi Muslim shrine in Syrian Kurdistan and announced a "jizya" tax on non-Muslims in their zones of control.
Azad Ahmed, a leading figure in Iraq’s civil resistance movement, was murdered by unknown assailants when his car was stopped between Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah.
