In light of the sweeping gains of the militants, Nouri Al-Maliki, the Prime Minister of Iraq at that time, attempted to declare a state of emergency though the Iraqi Parliament blocked his efforts to do so.

[41] Both the United States and Iran intervened in order to stem the tide against ISIS and were relatively successful in the breaking of the Siege of Amirli in which both parties played a significant role (however they did not and still do not officially cooperate or coordinate their respective efforts with one another).

The result was a devastating collapse in the military infrastructure of the Iraqi government with entire divisions throwing down their weapons and fleeing ISIS without a fight as happened in the Fall of Mosul.

[citation needed] ISIS has sent reinforcements to Tikrit from other parts of its self-proclaimed caliphate further north, where it came under attack on Monday from Kurdish forces around the oil-rich-city of Kirkuk.

[55][56] That night, US aircraft carried out 17 airstrikes in the center of Tikrit, which struck an ISIL building, two bridges, three checkpoints, two staging areas, two berms, a roadblock, and a command and control facility.

[57] On 31 March, the Iraqi security forces advanced into the city center,[58] seizing the Salaheddin provincial government headquarters and the Tikrit hospital, as they moved towards the presidential complex.

[32][68] Cleanup and defusing operations in the city continued, but Iraqi officials predicted that it would take at least several months to remove the estimated 5,000–10,000 IEDs left behind by ISIL in Tikrit.

[31] The continuing success of the allied forces (which are composed of mostly Shi'ite paramilitary groups, though they also contain a significant Sunni contingent),[69] particularly in Sunni areas such as Tikrit, where ISIS has been losing a series of conventional battles, has prompted them to utilise more guerilla-like stratagems such as sending out coordinated teams of suicide-bombers to Baghdad, the capital and political nerve centre of the Iraqi government, in order to bring some pressure to bear on the allies.