Timeline of the Islamic State (2014)

This is a timeline of events in the Levant by the Jihadist militant group called the Islamic State (also called IS, ISIS, ISIL or Daesh).
2014 events
January 2014
3 January: ISIS was proclaimed an Islamic state in Fallujah. After tension for a long time, the newly formed Army of Mujahedeen, the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front launched an offensive against ISIS-held territory in the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. A spokesman for the rebels said that rebels had attacked ISIS in up to 80% of all ISIS-held villages in Idlib and 65% of those in Aleppo.
4 January: ISIS claimed responsibility for the car-bomb attack on 2 January that killed four people and wounded dozens in the southern Beirut suburb of Haret Hreik, an area controlled by Hezbollah.
6 January: Syrian rebels had managed to expel ISIS forces from the city of Ar-Raqqah, ISIS's largest stronghold and capital of Ar-Raqqah province. Several weeks later ISIS took the city back.
8 January: Syrian rebels expelled most ISIS forces from the city of Aleppo. However, ISIS reinforcements from Deir ez-Zor province managed to retake several neighborhoods of the city of Ar-Raqqah. By mid-January ISIS fighters had retaken the entire city of Ar-Raqqah, while rebels expelled ISIS fighters fully from Aleppo city and the villages west of it.
25 January: ISIS announced the creation of its new Lebanese arm, pledging to fight the Shia militant group Hezbollah and its supporters in Lebanon.
29 January: Turkish aircraft near the border fired on an ISIS convoy inside Aleppo province in Syria, killing 11 ISIS fighters and one ISIS emir.
30 January: ISIS fired on border patrol soldiers in Turkey. The Turkish Army retaliated with Panter howitzers and destroyed the ISIS convoy.
In late January, it was confirmed that Syrian rebels had assassinated ISIS's second-in-command, Haji Bakr, who was al-Qaeda's military council head and a former military officer in Saddam Hussein's army.
February 2014
3 February: al-Qaeda's general command broke off its links with ISIS, reportedly to concentrate the Muslim extremist effort on unseating President Bashar al-Assad.
By mid-February, the al-Nusra Front had joined the battle in support of rebel forces, and expelled ISIS forces from Deir ez-Zor province in Syria.
23 February: The Islamic State carried out a suicide attack in Aleppo killing a commander of Ahrar ash-Sham and 6 other members of the group.
March 2014
By March, ISIS forces had fully retreated from Syria's Idlib province after battles against the Syrian rebels.
4 March: ISIS retreated from the Aleppo province-Turkey border town of Azaz and nearby villages, choosing instead to stay around Ar-Raqqah, expecting more fighting with al-Nusra.
8 March: During an interview with French television channel France 24, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of openly funding ISIS.
20 March: In Nigde, a city in Turkey, three ethnic Albanian members of ISIS--Benjamin Xu, Cendrim Ramadani and Muhammed Zakiri--opened fire while hijacking a truck, killing one police officer and one gendarmerie officer and wounding five people. Shortly after their arrest, Polis Ozel Harekat teams launch a series of operations against ISIS in the capital city, Istanbul. Police found documents and an ISIS flag in one place and two people from Azerbaijan were arrested.
April 2014
27 April: Iraqi military helicopters reportedly attacked and destroyed an ISIS convoy of eight vehicles inside Syria. This may be the first time that Iraqi forces have struck outside their country since the Gulf War.
May 2014
1 May: ISIS carried out a total of seven public executions in the city of Ar-Raqqah, in northern Syria. Pictures that emerged from the city show how ISIS had been carrying out public crucifixions in areas under its control. In most of these crucifixions, the victims were shot first and their bodies were then displayed, but there were also reports of crucifixions after the victims were shot or beheaded. In one case, a man was said to have been "crucified alive for eight hours," but there was no indication of whether he died.
June 2014
In early June, following its large-scale offensives in Iraq, ISIS was reported to have seized control of most of Mosul, the city with the second highest population in Iraq, a large part of the surrounding Nineveh province, and the city of Fallujah. ISIS also took control of Tikrit, the administrative center of the Salah ad Din Governorate, with the ultimate goal of capturing Baghdad, the capital city of Iraq. ISIS was believed to have only 2,000-3,000 fighters up until the Mosul campaign, but during that campaign, it became clear that there were far more fighters than was previously thought.
In June there were reports that a number of Sunni groups in Iraq had joined ISIS. However, the Kurds--who are mostly Sunnis--in the northeast of Iraq, were unwilling to be drawn into the conflict, and there were clashes in the area between ISIS and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
5 June: ISIS militants stormed the city of Samarra, Iraq, before being ousted from the city by airstrikes mounted by the Iraqi military.
6 June: ISIS militants carried out multiple attacks in the city of Mosul, Iraq.
7 June: ISIS militants took over the University of Anbar in Ramadi, Iraq and held 1,300 students hostage, before being ousted by the Iraqi military.
9 June: Mosul fell to ISIS control. The militants seized control of government offices, the airport, and police stations. Militants also looted the Central Bank in Mosul, reportedly absconding with US$429 million. More than 500,000 people fled Mosul to escape ISIS. Mosul is a strategic city as it is at a crossroad between Syria and Iraq, and poses the threat of ISIS seizing control of oil production.
11 June: ISIS seized the Turkish consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul, and kidnapped the head of the diplomatic mission and several staff members. ISIS seized the Iraqi city of Tikrit.
12 June: Human Rights Watch, an international human rights advocacy organization, issued a statement about the growing threat to civilians in Iraq.
13 June: Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed alarm at reports that ISIS fighters "have been actively seeking out--and in some cases killing--soldiers, police and others, including civilians, whom they perceive as being associated with the government."
15 June: ISIS militants captured the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, in the province of Nineveh. ISIS claimed that 1,700 Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered in the fighting had been killed, and released many images of mass executions via its Twitter feed and various websites.
22 June: ISIS militants captured two key crossings in Anbar, a day after seizing the border crossing at Al-Qaim, a town in a province which borders Syria. According to analysts, capturing these crossings could aid ISIS in transporting weapons and equipment to different battlefields.
24 June: The Syrian Air Force bombed ISIS positions in Iraq. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki stated: "There was no coordination involved, but we welcome this action. We welcome any Syrian strike against Isis because this group targets both Iraq and Syria."
25 June: The al-Nusra Front's branch in the Syrian town of al-Bukamal pledged loyalty to ISIS, thus bringing months of fighting between the two groups to a close.
25 June: In an interview with the BBC Arabic service, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that Iraq had purchased used Sukhoi fighter jets from Russia and Belarus to battle ISIS militants, after delays in the delivery of F-16 fighters purchased from the US. "[If] we had air cover, we would have averted what happened", he said.
26 June: Iraq launched its first counterattack against ISIS's advance with an airborne assault designed to seize back control of Tikrit University.
28 June: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Obama administration had requested US$500 million from Congress to use in the training and arming of "moderate" Syrian rebels fighting against the Syrian government, in order to counter the growing threat posed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
29 June: ISIS announced the establishment of a new caliphate. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was appointed its caliph, and the group formally changed its name to the Islamic State.
July 2014
2 July: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the new Islamic State, said that Muslims should unite to capture Rome in order to "own the world." He called on Muslims the world over to unite behind him as their leader.
3 July: ISIS captured Syria's largest oilfield from rival Islamist fighters, al-Nusra Front, who put up no resistance to the attack. Taking control of the al-Omar oilfield gave ISIS access to potentially useful crude oil reserves.
17 July: Syria's Shaer gas field in the Homs Governorate was seized by Islamic State. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 90 National Defence Force guards defending the field were killed, as were 21 ISIS fighters. The SOHR later put the death toll from the fighting and executions at 270 soldiers, militiamen and staff, and at least 40 ISIS fighters.
19 July: ISIS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing which killed 33 people and left more than 50 wounded. The explosion occurred in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, which is the site of a major Shia shrine.
24 July: ISIS blew up the Mosque and tomb of the Prophet Yunus (Jonah) in Mosul, with no reported casualties. Residents in the area said that ISIS had erased a piece of Iraqi heritage. Johah's tomb was also an important holy site concerning Jewish heritage.
26 July: ISIS blew up the Nabi Shiyt (Prophet Seth) shrine in Mosul. Sami al-Massoudi, deputy head of the Shia endowment agency which oversees holy sites, confirmed the destruction and added that ISIS had taken artifacts from the shrine to an unknown location.
28 July: To mark the Muslim holy festival of Eid al-Fitr, which ends the period of Ramadan, ISIS released and circulated a 30-minute video showing graphic scenes of mass executions.
The UN reported that of the 1,737 fatalities of the Iraq conflict during July so far, 1,186 were civilians.