Call to arms: Hundreds of volunteers answer plea by Iraqi cleric to join fight against jihadists as army soldiers desert their posts and head home

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Young men have streamed into volunteer centres across Baghdad, answering a call from the country's Shiite cleric
Army has been condemned by senior politicians because hoards of soldiers have deserted their posts and fled home
They boarded buses and trucks and headed for the frontline to join the army in the besieged north

Published: 06:49 EST, 14 June 2014 | Updated: 07:31 EST, 14 June 2014

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Hundreds of young Iraqi men have streamed into volunteer centres across Baghdad, answering a call by the country's senior Shiite cleric to join the fight against Sunni militants advancing in the north.

They were responding to a call by grand ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for Iraqis to defend their country against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which made rapid advances this week.

Volunteers from across Baghdad were ferried in buses to a base in the eastern part of the capital for training. In some centres, dozens of them climbed on to the back of army trucks, chanting Shiite slogans and hoisting assault rifles.

The groups will join the army on the front line, who have been condemned by senior politicians because hoards of soldiers have deserted their posts and fled home.

Joining the fight: Iraqi men board military trucks to join the army at the main recruiting center in Baghdad, Iraq

Gunfire: The Kurdish Peshmerga security forces have intensified their fight against militants from the al-Qaeda inspired ISIS

Dominant: After a decades-long dispute between Arabs and Kurds over the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, al-Qaeda troops just half an hour to seize it

The massive response to the call to arms comes as sectarian tensions threaten to push the country back towards civil war in the worst crisis since US forces withdrew at the end of 2011.

Fighters from Islamic State - an Al Qaeda splinter group, drawing support from former Saddam Hussein-era figures and other disaffected Sunnis - have made dramatic gains in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad after overrunning Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday.

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Soldiers and policemen have melted away in the face of the lightning advance, and thousands have fled to the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

Today, insurgents seized the small town of Adeim in Diyala province, 60 miles north of Baghdad, after Iraqi security forces pulled out, said the head of the municipal council, Mohammed Dhifan.

Jawad al-Bolani, a former cabinet minister close to prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, said a military offensive was under way to drive the insurgents from Tikrit, Saddam's home town north of Baghdad, although fighting in the area could not be confirmed.

The fast-moving rebellion has emerged as the biggest threat to Iraq's stability since even before the Americans left.

Long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions boiled over after the US-led invasion ousted Saddam in 2003, leading to vicious fighting between the two Muslim sects. But the bloodshed ebbed in 2008 after a so-called US surge, a revolt by moderate Sunnis against al Qaida in Iraq and a Shiite militia ceasefire.

They sat on trucks as they headed north to take on the ISIS, the militants who have seized a number of cities in the past week

Gridlock: Cars queue at a checkpoint heading into the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to escape the besieged city of Mosul

The latest bout of fighting, stoked by the civil war in neighboring Syria, has pushed the nation closer to a precipice that could partition it into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones.

State-run television aired a constant flow of nationalist songs, clips of soldiers marching or singing, flying aircraft, brief interviews with troops vowing to crush the militants and archive clips of the nation's top Shiite clerics.

Extensive clips of Mr al-Maliki's visit yesterday to the city of Samarra, home to a much-revered Shiite shrine that was bombed in 2006, were also broadcast.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi government's counte-rterrorism department said the son of Saddam's vice president, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was killed in an air raid by the Iraqi air force in Tikrit.

It said Ahmed al-Douri was killed with 50 other Saddam loyalists and Islamic State fighters.

Iran could contemplate cooperating with its old adversary the United States on restoring security to Iraq if it saw Washington confronting "terrorist groups in Iraq and elsewhere", Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday.

Rouhani, a pragmatist who has presided over a thaw in Iran's relations with the West, also said Tehran was unlikely to send forces to Iraq but stood ready to provide help within the framework of international law. Baghdad has not requested such assistance, he added.

Support: The men raise up weapons and shout slogans as they demonstration in the central Shiite Muslim shrine city of Najaf

Youthful backing: An Iraqi boy holds up a stick next to a man holding an assault rifle during a demonstration in the central Shiite Muslim shrine in the city if Najaf

Shi'ite Muslim Iran has been alarmed by the seizure this week of several major northern Iraqi towns by Sunni Islamist insurgent forces and their sweep southward to within an hour's drive of Baghdad, and not far from the Iranian border.

'We all should practically and verbally confront terrorist groups,' Rouhani told a news conference broadcast live on state television.

Asked if Tehran would work with Washington in tackling the advances by Sunni insurgents in Iraq, he replied: 'We can think about it if we see America starts confronting the terrorist groups in Iraq or elsewhere.'

Fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are bent on recreating a medieval caliphate spanning territory they have carved out in fragmenting Iraq and Syria, where it has exploited a power vacuum in the midst of civil war.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters earlier this week that Tehran, which has strong leverage in Shi'ite-majority Iraq, may be ready to cooperate with Washington in helping Baghdad fight back against the jihadist ISIL rebels.

The official said the idea of cooperating with the Americans was being discussed within the Tehran leadership. For now, according to Iranian media, Iran will send advisers and weaponry, although probably not troops, to boost Baghdad.

Crowds: Iraqi men fill military trucks to join the army. It follows a plea by a senior cleric who also condemned soldiers who had deserted their posts

'Iran has never dispatched any forces to Iraq and it is very unlikely it will ever happen,' Rouhani told Saturday's news conference.

Western diplomats suspect Iran has in the past sent some of its Revolutionary Guards, a hardline force that works in parallel with the army, to train and advise the Iraqi army or its militia allies.

Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, quoted by Fars news agency, said: 'Supporting the Iraqi government and nation doe not mean sending troops to Iraq. It means condemning terrorist acts and closing and safeguarding our joint borders.'

In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said he was reviewing military options, short of sending combat troops, to help Iraq repel the insurgency but warned any U.S. action must be accompanied by an Iraqi government effort to bridge divisions between Shi'ite and Sunni communities.

U.S. officials said there were no contacts going on with Iran over the crisis in Iraq.

Rouhani said he was not aware of any American plans for Iraq or whether Washington wanted to help Baghdad.

Desperate to fight: The volunteers cling onto the sides of a truck as passengers pull them into the vehicle

'If the Iraqi government and nation ask for our help, we will review it. So far there has not been such a request,' he added. 'We are ready to help in the framework of international regulations and laws.'

Rouhani said 'terrorist groups' were getting financial and political backing and weaponry from some regional countries and some powerful Western states.

He named no countries, but was alluding in part to Sunni Gulf Arabs who Iran suspects has funnelled support to ISIL.

'Where did ISIL come from? Who is funding this terrorist group? We had warned everyone, including the West, about the danger of backing such a terrorist and reckless group.'

Gulf Arab governments deny any role in backing ISIL, noting that the group has long battled Saudi Arabia's allies among other Sunni rebel factions in Syria.

Saudi Arabia last month designated ISIL a terrorist organisation, conveying its concern that young Saudis hardened by battle could come home to target the ruling Al Saud royal family - as happened after earlier wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.