Strategic Tal Afar, Airport Fall to Militants as Iraq Forces Retake Syria Border Crossing

The strategic Shiite-majority north Iraq town of Tal Afar and its airport were in the hands of Sunni Arab militants on Monday after days of heavy fighting, a local official and witnesses said.

"The town of Tal Afar and the airport... are completely under the control of the militants," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Witnesses said security forces had departed the town, and confirmed that militants were in control.

The town, which is located along a strategic corridor to Syria, had previously been the largest in the northern province of Nineveh not to fall to militants.

The militants have also seized the Al-Waleed border post between Iraq and Syria, officers said, meaning that all crossings between the neighboring countries are now outside government control.

The militants took the crossing on Sunday, a colonel and a captain in the border guards said.

Security forces that had been guarding it headed south to join troops at another crossing with Jordan, they said.

But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta, was later quoted by state television as saying that government forces had retaken Al-Waleed.

And Iraqi officers also confirmed regaining control of the crossing.

The two other official border posts between Iraq and Syria -- Al-Qaim and Rabia -- are still outside government hands, Militants control the first while security forces from the country's autonomous Kurdish region hold the second.

A major militant offensive, spearheaded by jihadists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) but involving a raft of other Sunni groups as well, began in Nineveh's capital Mosul on June 9.

The militants took Mosul the following day, swept through Nineveh and took major parts of four more provinces as well.

Earlier, 69 detainees were killed in a militant attack on an Iraqi convoy transporting them in an area south of Baghdad on Monday, officials said.

One policeman and eight gunmen were also killed in clashes that erupted during the attack in the Hashimiyah area of Babil province, according to a police captain and a doctor. It was not immediately clear how the detainees died.

It is the second instance of a large number of detainees being killed since the start of a militant offensive on June 9 that has overrun major areas of five different provinces.

At least 44 prisoners were killed during a militant assault on a prison in the city of Baquba last week.

Accounts differed as to who was responsible for the Baquba killings, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's security spokesman saying the prisoners were killed by insurgents carrying out the attack, and other officials saying they were killed by security forces as they tried to escape.

A major militant offensive, led by jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but involving other groups as well, has overrun swathes of five Iraqi provinces since it was launched on June 9.

Security forces wilted under the initial onslaught, and are now struggling to hold their ground in the face of the relentless militant drive.