Iraqi forces were massing north of Baghdad on Friday, aiming to strike back at Sunni Islamists whose drive toward the capital prompted the United States to send military advisers to stiffen government resistance.
President Barack Obama offered up to 300 Americans to help coordinate the fight. But he held off granting a request for air strikes from the Shi'ite-led government and renewed a call for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to do more to overcome sectarian divisions that have fuelled resentment among the Sunni minority.
In the area around Samarra, on the main highway 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, which has become a frontline of the battle with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the provincial governor, a rare Sunni supporter of Maliki, told cheering troops they would now force ISIL and its allies back.
A source close to Maliki told Reuters that the government planned to hit back now that it had halted the advance which saw ISIL seize the main northern city of Mosul, capital of Nineveh province, 10 days ago and sweep down along the Sunni-populated Tigris valley toward Baghdad as the U.S.-trained army crumbled.
Governor Abdullah al-Jibouri, whose provincial capital Tikrit was overrun last week, was shown on television on Friday telling soldiers in Ishaqi, just south of Samarra: "Today we are coming in the direction of Tikrit, Sharqat and Nineveh.
"These troops will not stop," he added, saying government forces around Samarra numbered more than 50,000.
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Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani called Friday for the newly elected parliament to begin work and start the process of forming the next government without delay.
Sistani's sermon, read by his representative at the Imam Hussein shrine in Kerbala, called for parliament to convene after Iraq's federal court ratified the results this week.
Also on Friday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Iraq needed a government of national unity, with or without Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, to counter a Sunni rebel insurgency.
Faulting Maliki for failing to ensure a more inclusive form of government, Fabius said it was critical now to better involve Sunni moderates to avoid them siding with what he described as the "terrorist group" ISIL, an al Qaeda splinter organisation.
Pressed in a media interview to say whether Maliki should form the broader-ranging government which U.N. Security Council veto-holder France advocated, Fabius replied: "With or without Maliki, but what Iraq needs is a government of national unity."
Without such a change, Iraq risked being being taken over by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda splinter group that has already overrun the country's north of the country, Fabius told BFM TV in an interview.
"It's the first time a terrorist group is threatening to take control of an entire state," he said.
REUTERS