According to local media sources, fierce clashes are underway between government forces and the Takfiri militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in northern areas, Press TV reported on Sunday.

Pro-government forces have retaken the control of the city of Muqdadiyah in Diyala Province northeast of Baghdad.

Military officials say the armed forces have achieved remarkable victories with the help of volunteer forces. Some 1.5 million Iraqis from different backgrounds have volunteered to join the battle against the ISIL extremists.

The army is now coordinating with forces in the city of Samarra and other areas north of the capital to recapture the territories overrun by the militants.

The reinforcements in Samarra were waiting orders to launch a counter-offensive against the ISIL militants in cities of al-Dour and Tikrit.

On June 10, the militants of the al-Qaeda offshoot group took control of Mosul, before the fall of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced out of their homes since the time.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said that the country’s security forces would confront the terrorists, calling Mosul seizure a “conspiracy.”

Major Shia clerics, namely Sheikh Bashir al-Najafi and Seyyed Mortada al-Qazwini, as well as Iraqi Sunni scholar Sheikh Ahmed al-Kabisi of Basra and a number of other influential Shia and Sunni clerics across the nation have called on their communities to heed the call by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to take up arms against the terrorist threat.

NTJ/HH