The United States rushed Thursday to evacuate hundreds of Americans from Iraq and was desperately making plans to rescue thousands of others as advancing al Qaeda-inspired forces vowed to attack Baghdad and topple the government.
There are about 5,000 American contractors remaining in the increasingly dangerous country, including a team that was bailed out Thursday from a base in Balad, an hour north of the threatened capital, Baghdad.
The three planeloads of Americans were mostly civilians who were part of one of the largest training programs for the Iraqi military — which so far has been largely impotent in the fight against bloodthirsty rebels.
Private companies were rushing American workers out of harm’s way as the country teetered on the brink of disintegration.
The State Department warned that US citizens remain “at high risk for kidnapping and terrorist violence,” and told them to avoid public places for fear of kidnappings or attacks.
Intelligence sources told Fox News that officials are scrambling to find ways to get other Americans out fast if the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate.
“We need places to land. We need safe and secure airfields,” one source said, noting the extremists are “seizing airfields and they have surface-to-air missiles, which very clearly threatens our pilots and planes if we do go into evacuation mode.”
Another US official told the website TheBlaze that the US Embassy, the United Nations and other foreign organizations are rapidly “preparing contingency plans to evacuate employees.”
Germany’s Foreign Ministry called on its citizens in Iraq to leave dangerous northern provinces and at least temporarily get out of Baghdad.
Other developments in the fast-moving conflict included:
• President Obama said Thursday he had not ruled out any options, and sources said the United States could launch airstrikes.
• While Washington and its NATO allies remained on the sidelines, the Iranians, who are Shiites, sent in the Revolutionary Guard to help Iraqi troops take back control of most of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, and said they would bomb rebel forces if they got within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Baghdad.
“We, as the Islamic Republic of Iran, will not tolerate this violence and terrorism,” vowed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
• A spokesman for the rebel forces, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, vowed to take the battle to the capital. “We will march toward Baghdad because we have an account to settle there,” railed Abu Mohammed al-Adnani.
• In Baghdad, thousands of men flooded army recruiting stations to answer Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s call to arms.
We, as the Islamic Republic of Iran, will not tolerate this violence and terrorism.
- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
• The fate of Iraq’s largest oil refinery in the city of Baiji remained uncertain. Concerns over supply sent crude-oil prices soaring, contributing to a 110-point drop in the Dow.
At the White House, while the president said all options were on the table, a spokesman later clarified that those options did not include boots on the ground.
“My team is working around the clock to identify how we can provide the most effective assistance to them. I don’t rule out anything,” Obama said.
Critics accused the president — who has repeatedly argued that al Qaeda and its affiliates have been decimated — of being caught off guard. “What’s the president doing, taking a nap?” asked House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called the violence a “colossal failure” of Obama’s security team.
“Everybody in his national-security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced,” McCain said before a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on Iraq.
The fanatics are fighting to create an Islamist emirate spanning both sides of the Iraq-Syria border — a terrorist haven that would be ruled by al Qaeda’s harsh version of Sharia law. The fighters were able to easily advance because local police and army units — trained by the US at a cost of billions of dollars — melted away at the first signs of violence.
The reason was fear, as the rebels have threatened anyone in the military with death — even posting a video on a terrorist website showing militants knocking on the door of a police major in the dead of night. When he answers, they blindfold him and then carve off his head with a knife in his own bedroom.
The UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported that 15 members of the Iraqi special forces were beheaded by insurgents in Kirkuk.