Al-Qaida-linked militants continued their march across the country, but Kurdish fighters filled the vacuum created by fleeing Iraqi forces, and pressure built on President Obama to take action in Iraq.
Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Sunni group so radical that al-Qaida disowned it, seized Mosul and Tikrit this week.
Today, Iraqi officials told The Associated Press that the Islamists entered two towns in Diyalah province. One of those towns is Jalula, 80 miles northeast of Baghdad; the other is Sadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital.
The gains are significant because while Mosul and Tikrit are Sunni-dominated, Diyalah is ethnically mixed. But what the fall of Jalula and Sadiyah have in common with the other two cities is that Iraqi forces showed little to no resistance.
NPR's Alice Fordham, who is reporting from the country, spoke to Ali Yasser Ali, a police officer who worked alongside the Iraqi army in Mosul. He said the people of Mosul refused to cooperate with security forces.
"We asked why they wouldn't agree to work with us. Why?" he told Alice through an interpreter. "They said we are not humans. We are monsters."
Alice notes that Ali is Shiite while most people in Mosul are Sunni — a sectarian division that has come into sharp relief in Iraq. She also spoke to Farma Khalaf, a Sunni soldier, who told her Sunnis had reason to hate the Shiites.
"This is a failing system," he said in Arabic.
He says he saw Shiite soldiers promoted ahead of him, and Sunnis – including women - from the region detained without reason.
Here's more from Alice's story:
"Seeing swaths of Iraq slip under the control of Sunni militants in the last week has seemed startling and swift. But security forces seem disillusioned, and they don't see the point of fighting the al-Qaida offshoot known as ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria because that group has the support of the local Sunni population."