Isis: Former Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki blames fall of Mosul on Turkish 'conspiracy'

Iraq's former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki has blamed the fall of Mosul to Islamic State on a Turkish government "conspiracy", after a parliamentary committee said he should face charges for negligence.

In a Facebook posting, al-Maliki said the Iraqi parliamentary report into the fall of Iraq's second city to the jihadist group had "no value". Iraqi MPs approved the committee's findings that 30 former senior officials should face charges on August 18, and forwarded the report to the country's chief prosecutor for possible legal action.

"What happened in Mosul was a conspiracy planned in Ankara, then the conspiracy moved to Erbil," Maliki said in posts on Facebook, referring to the capitals of Turkey and the Kurdistan regional government.

Shia al-Maliki's sectarian policies are widely blamed for bolstering support for Isis in Sunni regions of Iraq. Last summer the extremist Sunni group swept through areas of northern and north-western Iraq, with Iraqi forces abandoning weapons, military equipment and uniforms as they fled the group.

In seeking to exculpate his own Shia-dominated government, al-Maliki is alluding to accusations made that the Turkish government and Kurds failed to act when warned Isis were planning an imminent attack on Mosul weeks before the city fell. Mahmud al-Hassan, the head of the parliamentary legal panel, said Iraq's judiciary is now to decide if charges should be brought.