BAGHDAD-
Jihadists were pushing toward Baghdad Thursday after capturing a town only 90 kilometers to its north, in a lightning three-day offensive the Iraqi government has failed to stop.
Fighters from the Sunni Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria seized the town of Dhuluiyah, a municipal councillor, a police colonel and witnesses told a foreign news agency by telephone.
The nearby Muatassam area has also fallen to militants, the municipal council member and witnesses said.
ISIS spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani promised the group would push on to Baghdad and Karbala, a city southwest of the capital that is one of the holiest sites for Shiite Muslims, in a statement carried by jihadists websites.
With militants closing in, Iraq’s parliament was to meet for an emergency session Thursday to consider a request from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the president’s office for it to declare a state of emergency.
Doing so requires a two-thirds vote, making it unlikely to pass the sharply divided parliament, which has produced little significant legislation in years and is often poorly attended.
On Wednesday, the militants were repulsed in heavy fighting when they tried to enter Samarra, to the north, bypassing it and heading to Dhuluiyah.
Army Staff Lieutenant General Sabah al-Fatlawi said soldiers and “elite forces” backed by air strikes defeated a “fierce attack by ISIS members,” and that troops were regrouping to counter attack.
Samarra is mainly Sunni Arab but is home to a shrine revered by the country’s Shiite majority, a site whose bombing by Al-Qaeda-linked militants in 2006 sparked a Shiite-Sunni conflict that killed tens of thousands.
“There is panic among residents,” who are buying up goods and forming long queues at gas stations, Thair Mohammed told the agency from the city.
A resident of Dhuluiyah, Abu Abdullah, said the situation there was calm Thursday, but people were keeping to their houses.
He said he heard airstrikes the night before.
ISIS has spearheaded a major offensive that began late Monday and since overrun the entire northern province of Ninevah and significant parts of Kirkuk to its southeast and Salaheddin to its south.
The offensive began in Nineveh provincial capital Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Witnesses said Thursday that people there were increasingly venturing out of their homes and that shops were reopening, but government offices remained shuttered.