海角大神

• A daily roundup on terrorism and security issues.

Is the tide turning in Iraq against the self-described Islamic State, or are events there just the normal ebb and flow of war?

US defense officials said yesterday that the Islamist group鈥檚 advances in Iraq had been stalled or reversed, and held out the possibility that US ground forces may be called on to assist an Iraqi Army that was no longer fleeing the battlefield. Today, Iraqi security officials said that IS militants had been driven from Baiji, Iraq鈥檚 largest refinery, which they had captured in a stunning summer offensive.

The gains also followed by just one day the release online of an audio recording of the IS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in which he urged his followers to 鈥渆rupt volcanoes of jihad everywhere鈥� and disparaged US plans to send additional soldiers to Iraq.

The Associated Press, citing two Iraqi security officials it reached by telephone in Baiji, reported Friday that Iraqi troops backed by Sunni militias had pushed the IS from its last strongholds in the town and had hoisted the Iraqi flag over the refinery. The officials said bomb squads were working to clear booby-trapped houses and bombs planted on the roads.

In Washington, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee Thursday that Iraqi troops' performance is improving, but that US troops might have to help them clear larger cities, such as Mosul, that are occupied by the IS militants, The New York Times reported.

The reported Iraqi gains were not the only apparent setback for the IS forces.

Islamic State controls large sections of northern Syria and Iraq and just this week broadened its alliances throughout the Middle East, including an apparent rapprochement with an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria and a pledge of allegiance from Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, which has been attacking Egyptian military forces in the Sinai Peninsula.

But in northern Syria, along the border with Turkey, a months-long IS siege of Kobane has apparently stalled since Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters joined the city's Kurdish defenders. The siege had driven more than 200,000 mostly Kurdish residents into Turkey, and drawn the attention of the US-led, anti-IS bombing campaign, which reportedly has killed hundreds of IS fighters in Iraq and Syria in recent weeks.

Mr. Baghdadi鈥檚 recorded speech, meanwhile, seemed to put to rest rumors about his fate after a weekend airstrike against a column of IS vehicles in northern Iraq. The speech made reference to the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis pledge, which occurred Monday, and was distributed online in three languages, the Times reported.