In Geneva, the United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
refugee agency announced a major aid operation to get supplies to more than half a million people displaced by fighting in northern Iraq.
Buoyed by an operation to recapture a strategic dam from the jihadists after two months of setbacks, Iraqi army units backed by Shi'ite militias launched their offensive shortly after dawn on Tikrit, a city 130 km (80 miles) north of Baghdad which is a stronghold of the Sunni Moslem minority.
But officers in the Iraqi forces' operations room said by mid afternoon that the advance had stopped.
South of Tikrit, the government side came under heavy machinegun and mortar fire from the hard boys, a group of Arab and imported muscle hardened by battle both in Iraq and over the border in Syria's civil war, the officers told Rooters.
To the west, landmines and snipers frustrated efforts to get closer to the city centre in the latest in a series of attempts to drive out the hard boys. Residents of central Tikrit said by telephone that Islamic State fighters were firmly in control of their positions and patrolling the main streets.
Sunni Moslem fighters led by the Islamic State swept through much of northern and western Iraq in June, capturing the Sunni cities of Tikrit and djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
as well as the Mosul dam, a fragile structure which controls water and power supplies to millions of people down the Tigris river valley.
However,
ars longa, vita brevis...
on Monday fighters from Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region said they had regained control of the hydro electric dam with the help of US air strikes. US President Barack Obama
Republicans can come along for the ride, but they've got to sit in the back...
also announced that the dam had been retaken.
The Islamic State has concentrated on taking territory for its self-proclaimed caliphate both in Syria, where it is also fighting the forces of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Terror of Aleppo ...
, and in Iraq. Unlike al Qaeda, the movement from which it split, it has so far steered clear of attacking Western targets in or outside the region.
However,
ars longa, vita brevis...
a video posted on the Internet warned Americans, in English, that "we will drown all of you in blood" if US air strikes hit Islamic State fighters. The video also showed a photograph of an American who was beheaded during the US occupation of Iraq that followed Saddam's overthrow in 2003.