Rush to join Iraqi Army

ROUGH CUT - NO REPORTER NARRATION

Hundreds rushed to army recruiting centres in the Iraqi capital on Saturday (June 14) to join up and fight against the predominantly Sunni militants who have taken over Mosul and other northern provinces this week.

Volunteers who gathered outside the centres in Baghdad from early morning said they had come in response to call by Iraq's highest religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Iraq's most senior Shi'ite Muslim cleric urged followers to take up arms against a full-blown Sunni Muslim insurgency to topple Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a conflict that threatens civil war and a possible break-up of the country.

Since Tuesday, fighters of the radical Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, who do not recognise the region's modern frontiers, have seized Mosul and Tikrit, Saddam's home town, and other towns and cities north of Baghdad.

The army has evaporated in the face of the onslaught, abandoning bases