BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces fought for a strategic university campus in Tikrit on Friday and bombarded the city in an effort to retake it from militants threatening to tear the country apart.

The military operation came as a top cleric urged the country’s leaders to unite, after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki conceded political measures were needed to defeat the militant offensive that has killed more than 1,000 people and overrun major parts of five provinces.

In further fallout from the crisis, the president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region declared there was no going back on Kurdish self-rule in disputed territory, including ethnically divided northern oil city of Kirkuk, now defended against the Sunni militants by Kurdish fighters.

International agencies meanwhile raised alarm over the humanitarian consequences of the fighting, with up to 10,000 people having fled a northern Christian town in recent days and 1.2 million displaced by unrest in Iraq this year.

Iraqi forces swooped into Tikrit University by helicopter on Thursday, and a police major said that there were periodic clashes on the campus on Friday.

A senior army officer said Iraqi forces were targeting militants in Tikrit with air strikes to protect forces at the university and prepare for an assault on the city.

Troops are deployed in areas around Tikrit for the attack, the officer said.

Another senior officer said taking the university is an important step in regaining control of Tikrit, the hometown of executed dictator Saddam Hussein, which Arab militants seized on June 11.

The military counter-offensive is the latest effort to regain the initiative after security forces wilted in the face of the initial insurgent onslaught, led by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS) but involving other groups as well.

Kurdish leader Mas­sud Barzani said Baghdad could no longer object to Kurdish self-rule in Kirkuk and other towns from which federal forces withdrew in the face of the militant advance. “Now, this (issue) ... is achieved,” he said, referring to a constitutional article meant to address the Kurds’ decades-old ambition to incorporate the territory in their autonomous region in the north over the objections of successive governments in Baghdad.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is revered within the Shia community, urged Iraqi leaders to unite and form a government quickly after parliament convenes on July 1.

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2014