Iraq helicopters fire on university campus

Iraqi helicopters fired on a university campus in Tikrit on Friday to dislodge insurgents who overran the city in an onslaught that has given them control of most majority Sunni regions and brought them close to Baghdad. Tikrit, the hometown of former dictator Saddam Hussein, fell a fortnight ago to Sunnis led by fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which split from al Qaeda. A rights group said analysis of photographs and satellite imagery ‘strongly indicate’ that ISIL staged mass executions in Tikrit after seizing it on June 11 early in their offensive. ISIL killed as many as 190 men in at least two locations over three days, Human Rights Watch said. Numbers may be much higher but the difficulty of locating bodies and getting to the area had prevented a full investigation, it added. Iraqi forces launched an airborne assault on Tikrit on Thursday, flying commandos into a stadium in helicopters, at least one of which crashed after coming under fire from insurgents. ‘My family and I left early this morning. We could hear gunfire and helicopters are striking the area,’ said Farhan Ibrahim Tamimi, a professor at the university who fled Tikrit for a nearby town, according to Reuters.