AMERLI (Iraq): Iraqi forces made more progress on Tuesday in their campaign against militants, even as anger boiled over in Baghdad where protesters stormed parliament over the fate of missing soldiers who surrendered in June.

After breaking a months-long siege of the Shia Turkmen-majority town of Amerli by fighters of the Islamic State (IS), formerly known as Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS), troops also regained control of part of a key highway linking Baghdad to the north.

Two towns north of Amerli were taken from the militants on Monday as Iraqi forces — backed by US air strikes — won their first major victories since the army’s collapse across much of the north in June.

That collapse left some 1,700 soldiers who surrendered in militant hands, with many believed to have been executed.

Govt forces make gains against militants

Demanding to know their fate, hundreds of angry relatives stormed parliament, attacked MPs and began a sit-in in its main chamber, an official said.

Anti-riot police were deployed to try to evict the protesters, who were also calling for some officers to be held accountable, said the official, who was present in parliament.

The militants have reportedly carried out widespread atrocities, with Amnesty International on Tuesday accusing them of war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

The Sunni extremist IS declared an Islamic “caliphate” in regions under its control in Iraq and Syria after it swept through much of the Sunni Arab heartland north of Baghdad in June and then stormed minority Christian and Yazidi Kurdish areas.

IS has carried out beheadings, crucifixions and public stonings, and Amnesty accused it of “war crimes, including mass summary killings and abductions” in areas it controls.

“The massacres and abductions being carried out by the Islamic State provide harrowing new evidence that a wave of ethnic cleansing against minorities is sweeping across northern Iraq,” said Amnesty’s senior crisis response adviser, Donatella Rovera.

Assistance is now arriving in Amerli, brought in both by fighters and the United Nations, which said it had “delivered 45 metric tonnes of life-saving supplies”.

As an aid truck entered the town, one man who had fought to defend Amerli said it was the first time he had seen grapes in months.

The siege took a heavy toll on residents, including Umm Ahmed, who lost her husband and 10-year-old son to a mortar round, leaving her alone to raise their three daughters, the oldest of whom is eight.

There was “no food and no water to drink, and the children and the elderly were dying”, she said.

A day after seizing Amerli, troops and Shia militiamen on Monday retook Sulaiman Bek and Yankaja, two towns to its north that had been important militant strongholds.

Army Staff Lieutenant General Abdulamir al-Zaidi said they continued the advance on Tuesday, regaining control of a stretch of the main highway to northern Iraq that had been closed by the militants for almost three months.

“The way from Baghdad to Kirkuk has become secure,” said the commander of the Badr militia, Transport Minister Hadi al-Ameri.

The United States said it launched four air strikes in the Amerli area, meaning that it effectively supported operations involving militia forces that previously fought against US troops in Iraq.

The government’s reliance on Shia militiamen in this and other operations risks entrenching groups which themselves have a history of brutal sectarian killings.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2014