Mass beheadings reported in northern Iraq as al-Qaeda forces take Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town – LIVE LINK UPDATES HERE

Tikrit, Iraq (AFP) – Militants took control of the Iraqi city of Tikrit and freed hundreds of prisoners on Wednesday, police said, the second provincial capital to fall in two days.

“All of Tikrit is in the hands of the militants,” a police colonel said of the Salaheddin provincial capital, which lies roughly half way between Baghdad and Iraq’s second city Mosul which fell on Tuesday.

A police brigadier general said that the militants attacked from the north, west and south of the city, and that they were from powerful jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

A police major said the militants had freed some 300 inmates from a prison in the city.

ISIL is spearheading a spectacular offensive that began late on Monday and has since overrun all of Nineveh province and its capital Mosul as well as parts of Kirkuk to its southeast and Salaheddin to its south.  (read more)

(Washington Post)  For all his power and newfound notoriety, there are only two authenticated photos of a man now called the world’s “most powerful jihadi leader.” One shows a serious man with an olive complexion and rounded countenance. The other, released by the Iraqi government in January, depicts an unsmiling bearded figure in a black suit. The image is cracked and blurry, as though someone had taken a picture of a picture.

The murkiness of the photo of the man who calls himself Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is appropriate. Though he’s “the world’s most dangerous man” to Time magazine and the “the new bin Laden” to Le Monde, the man who orchestrated the sacking of northern Iraq’s largest city and today has control of a nation-size swath of land, is a relatively unknown and enigmatic figure.

Much of what is known of Baghdadi’s history is unconfirmed, while other information is disputed to such a degree that it’s nearly impossible to discern where fact meets Baghdadi’s rising myth.

Several facts, however, are clear: Baghdadi leads the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He is a shrewd strategist, a prolific fundraiser and a ruthless killer. The United States has a $10 million bounty on his head.

He has thrown off the yoke of al-Qaeda command and just took his biggest prize yet in Mosul, an oil hub that sits at the vital intersection of Iraq, Turkey and Syria. And in just one year of grisly killing, he has in all likelihood surpassed even al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in international clout and prestige among Islamist militants. […]

But even then, Baghdadi, today respected among militants as a battlefield tactician, maintained his anonymity. No one knows where he is, it is said. And reports say that on the rare circumstances he meets a prisoner, he wears a mask.

The rise of ISIS underneath his stewardship has been less about cult of personality than what one expert told AFP signaled a “transnational ideology.” This became especially clear after Baghdadi cast off al-Qaeda’s leadership in June 2013. “I chose the command of God over the command that runs against it in the letter,” Baghdadi told al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri, who had tried to bring the rogue commander back into line.

Since, the power of Baghdadi, who some say may soon establish himself as emir of a new Islamic state, has only grown. As has that of ISIS.

“ISIS’s rise at the expense of Zawahiri’s movement signals that a new, more dangerous hybrid based on state development by wrecking everything in its path is emerging from the Syrian terrorist incubator,” wrote Theodore Karasik of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. “Ultimately, ISIS seeks to create an Islamic state from where they would launch a global holy war. Perhaps that war is now beginning as Baghdadi’s ISIS eclipses Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda.  (read more)