Richard Engel reported on NBC’s Nightly News that "we could be witnessing the start of a long civil war in Iraq."
"And this is not just a problem for Iraq and Syria," Engel cautioned, "these militants are also very anti-American."
Engel told Brian Williams that "one former commander of all U.S. troops in Iraq said what is happening is ‘tragic.’"
The Iraqi government has lost control of several large territories in northern and central Iraq to a jihadist group, an offshoot of al Qaeda. On Wednesday, they seized Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq.
According to Engel, "some Iraqi security forces are fighting, but most appear to be stripping off their uniforms, leaving them in the streets, and abandoning their posts, weapons and vehicles", while "thousands of civilians are fleeing the area, living in tents."