ISIL 'uses Turkish Consulate in Mosul as headquarters'

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has started to use the Turkish Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as their headquarters,  Al-Monitor reported, quoting an Iraqi official.

ISIL had recently renamed itself simply as the Islamic State (IS).

“It is absolutely true that IS has been using the Turkish Consulate as its main headquarters and that [ISIL leader Abu Bakr) Baghdadi spent several hours there,” Atheel al-Nujaifi, the governor of Mosul, told Al-Monitor. “It is their office.”

ISIL had stormed the Turkish Consulate on June 10, taking all 49 there hostage, including Turkey's Consul General Özturk Yılmaz.

Meanwhile, thousands of Christians poured into the territories of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), as they fled a July 19 ultimatum by jihadists who overran northwestern Iraq last month and proclaimed a caliphate.

As militants attempted to break government defences in strategic areas and edge closer to Baghdad, Christians joined hundreds of thousands of Shiite and other refugees into Kurdistan, AFP reported.

Their flight to the safety of the neighboring autonomous region coincided with the expected homecoming of Iraq’s Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, after 18 months of medical treatment in Germany.

The ISIL group running Mosul had already demanded that those Christians still in the city convert, pay a special tax or leave but messages blaring on mosques’ loudspeakers appeared to spark an exodus.

An earlier statement by Mosul’s new rulers had said there would be "nothing for them but the sword" if Christians did not abide by those conditions before noon (0900 GMT) on July 19.

"Christian families are on their way to...