Live Blog: The struggle for Iraq

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Iraqi government of failing to protect forty-nine Turkish abducted in Iraq, pledging to ensure their safe return.

“Everything possible is being done for the safe return of our citizens abducted by the ISIL - Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - in Iraq”, said Erdogan while speaking at the parliamentary group meeting of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party. 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki dismissed several senior security force officers Tuesday, including the top commander for Nineveh province in the north, the first to fall in the offensive.

Maliki also ordered that one of the officers he fired face court-martial for desertion.

Officials have said that insurgents briefly held areas of Baquba, a short drive from Baghdad, and took control of most of Tal Afar, a Shiite-majority town in north Iraq that lies along a strategic corridor to Syria.

The overnight attack on Baquba, which was pushed back by security forces but left 44 prisoners dead at a police station, marked the closest that fighting has come to the capital as part of a lightning offensive in which jihadists have said they intend to march on Baghdad and the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala.

Speaking in Ankara, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered his thoughts on the Iraq crisis.

“The consulate staff in Mosul Iraq didn't have a choice but to surrender because all security staff had abadoned their positions."

“Everything possible is being done for the safe return of our citizens abducted by ISIL in Iraq”

“We could remain silent on injustice and murders in Iraq, Syria and Egypt like certain countries but we preferred to speak out for the oppressed people of these countries”,

A week-long militant offensive that has overrun swathes of Iraq is "life-threatening" and is the biggest threat to its sovereignty in many years, the UN envoy to Baghdad told AFP.

"Right now, it's life-threatening for Iraq but it poses a serious danger to the region," Nickolay Mladenov said in an interview on Monday.

"Therefore, there needs to be a realisation in the region. The Iraq crisis must be solved by the Iraqis but they cannot do that without the international community and the constructive cooperation of the region."

He added that "Iraq faces the biggest threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity" in years.

Sunni armed groups have seized most of a key Shiite majority town in northern Iraq, a government official said on Tuesday, in fighting that has killed dozens of civilians and combatants.

Security forces and civilian fighters still hold parts of Tal Afar, in Nineveh province, along a strategic corridor to Syria, according to deputy provincial council chief Nuriddin Qabalan.

It will be "almost impossible" for Iraq to return to how it was before recent sweeping gains by jihadist fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the prime minister of the Kurdistan region warned on Tuesday.

Nechirvan Barzani told the BBC it would be difficult to find a resolution with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in power and recommended an autonomous region for Sunnis as a potential solution.

"Now we have to sit down and find a solution, find how to live together... but if we expect, if we think that Iraq will go back like before Mosul, I don't think so, it's almost impossible."

He said a political rather than military solution was needed to the unrest, taking account of Sunnis' feeling of being "neglected" by government policies.

Asked whether a solution was possible with Maliki in power, he said: "There is no trust right now we have to be honest... in my view it's difficult."

Overnight, it was reported that as many 275 American military personnel are being sent to Iraq to protect US diplomatic staff in their embassy.

"These US military personnel are entering Iraq with the consent of the government of Iraq," the White House said in a statement.

"The US embassy in Baghdad remains open, and a substantial majority of the US embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission."

Pan-Arab daily al-Hayat is reporting that 200,000 people have fled from around Tel Afar, a strategically-important city near the borders with Turkey and Syria.

Meanwhile, Iraqi news site al-Sumaria reports that militants are beginning to retreat from the city, after over 300 fighters were reportedly killed there on Monday.

Turkey's Deputy Foreign Minister Naci Koru has announced that Turkey has been sending humanitarian aid to crisis-hit Iraq.

According to the Foreign Minister's Twitter account, Turkey began on Monday to send humanitarian aid, food supplies and tents to Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of people are internally displaced.

Koru told a press conference that the “humanitarian needs of our Turkmen brothers are very important.”

The Guardian reported the seizure of 160 computer flash sticks which contained the most detailed information yet known about ISIL, the group of militants that now controls Iraq's second city. 

The spokesperson for the head of the armed forces, Qassem Ata, has denied in a press conference that ISIL militants are in control of Tel Afar.

The US has urged Iran to play a 'non-sectarian' role in Iraq, reports AFP.

"We would push Iran to address problems in a non-sectarian way," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Many social media users, including the head of the Dubai police, are reporting that the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death back in 2006, Ruuf Rashid, has been captured and is in the hands of militants:

Social media buzz about capture of Saddam Hussein judge