TIM ARANGO

Hundreds breached the razor wire of Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone, long seen as a symbol of a government detached from ordinary Iraqi citizens.

Iraq, where nearly 8 million people rely on a government salary or pension, will probably be forced to make crippling budget cuts. The economic shock, they fear, could lead to large-scale social unrest even as the country is pulled apart by war, displacement and sectarian animosities.

Islamic State militants attacked a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad on Monday evening, killing at least 17 people and turning the neighborhood into an urban war zone at rush hour, with helicopters hovering overhead and snipers taking positions on nearby rooftops.

The explosions Saturday took place before a peace rally protesting the conflict between Kurdish militants and the government.

Ideologically unified, the Islamic State is emerging as a social and political movement in many Sunni areas, filling a void in the absence of solid national identity and security.

The last Iraqi security forces fled Ramadi on Sunday, as the city fell completely to the militants of the Islamic State, who ransacked the provincial military headquarters, seizing a large store of weapons, and killed people loyal to the government, according to security officials and tribal leaders.

With the United States continuing to pressure Turkey to do more in the fight against the Islamic State, Turkey’s position has hardened around an idea it has pushed for years as a strategy to confront the chaos of the Syrian civil war: a buffer zone along its frontier with Syria.

The Islamic State's march across Muslim countries -- with its mass killings, videotaped beheadings, ethnic cleansing -- is forcing nearly every nation with a stake to reconsider relationships often shaped by ancient animosities. Analysts say it is perhaps the most turbulent moment for the Middle East since the schism between Sunnis and Shiites centuries ago that defines the region's battle lines to this day.