PM offers last chance ahead of Tikrit attack

Iraq’s prime minister called on Sunni tribal fighters to abandon Isis yesterday, ahead of a promised offensive to retake Saddam Hussein’s hometown from the extremists.

Haider al-Abadi offered no timeline for an attack on Tikrit, the hometown of the late Iraqi dictator about 130 kilometres north of Baghdad that fell into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria last summer.

However, Shi’ite militias and Iraqi security forces have stationed themselves around Tikrit as state-run media has warned that the city ‘‘will soon return to its people’’.

But sending Shi’ite militias into the Sunni city of Tikrit, the capital of Iraq’s Salahuddin province, could reprise the bloody, street-by-street insurgent battles that followed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

On Sunday, two suicide car bombers killed 16 nearby Shi’ite militiamen and wounded 31.

Al-Abadi offered what he called ‘‘the last chance’’ for Sunni tribal fighters, promising them a pardon during a news conference in Samarra, 95km north of Baghdad. His office said he arrived in Samarra to ‘‘supervise the operation to liberate Tikrit from the terrorist gangs’’.

‘‘I call upon those who have been misled or committed a mistake to lay down arms and join their people and security forces in order to liberate their cities,’’ al-Abadi said.

He said the operation would see troops come from several directions, but he declined to give an exact time for the operation’s start.

However, his presence in Samarra suggests it could come soon. A statement from his office yesterday announced the start of a security operation to ‘‘liberate’’ Salahuddin province.

The Iraqi military previously launched an operation in late June to try to wrest back control of Tikrit, but that quickly stalled after making little headway.

Other planned offensives by Iraq’s military, which collapsed under the initial Isis group blitz, also have failed to make up ground, though soldiers have taken back the nearby refinery town of Beiji, backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition.

‘‘I call upon those who have been misled or committed a mistake to lay down arms.’’