Special to WorldTribune.com

BAGHDAD — Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has established positions in and around the Iraqi capital.

Iraqi security sources said ISIL has reached the outskirts of Baghdad from several directions. They said ISIL was surrounding the city from both the south and north while infiltrating suicide bomb squads.

“There are sleeper cells all throughout the city, but now there are also terror squads that control the approaches to Baghdad,” a source said.

The sources said the Iraq Army has been ordered to eliminate ISIL strongholds outside Baghdad. They said a major target was the Babil province southwest of the capital.

Iraq has already announced a campaign to stop the ISIL advance. The government said it ordered the doubling of police forces at entrances around Baghdad.

Still, ISIL was said to have been moving toward Baghdad from the neighboring Anbar province, under control of the Sunni movement and tribal allies. The sources said ISIL has been hampering operations by the Iraq Army and government-sponsored Shi’ite militias.

The sources said ISIL’s control of major highways near Baghdad has blocked an Iraq Army offensive in northern Iraq. They cited the withdrawal of the army from the Sunni city of Tikrit in mid-July.

“The army has not yet cleared roads to bring supplies to troops sent to the north,” the source said. “As a result, after a short period of fighting, they have to return.”

  Anbar province, Babil province, ISIL on outskirts of Baghdad with ‘sleeper cells throughout the city’, Tikrit