President Barack Obama said he won’t rule out using airstrikes to help Iraq’s government beat back Islamist militants who’ve seized cities and threatened to re-ignite a sectarian war in OPEC’s second-largest oil producer. Government forces are seeking to dislodge fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant from cities north of Baghdad after they overran army positions in Mosul this week and advanced on the Iraqi capital. Clashes continued today between the sides in former President Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Baghdad and in the surrounding countryside, which consists of farmland with a Sunni-Muslim majority. Three years after the U.S. withdrew forces from Iraq , the army of the Shiite-led government has collapsed in many areas when confronted by the radical Sunni forces, threatening the stability of oil production in the north of the country. Militants seized the town of […]