CNN on Tuesday conveyed reports that Islamist militants loyal to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have made significant gains outside of Baghdad, where fighters are advancing on the city of Baquba and where more than 50 people were killed when ISIS militants used hand grenades to attack a local prison:

According to a Baquba police official and an official in the Baquba governor’s office, militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, have “made a great advance on Baquba” and are pushing very hard to take it, but the city has not fallen.

The Baquba officials told CNN that ISIS is moving in on the western side of Baquba and that villages just west of the city, as well as some areas in western Baquba, are under ISIS control.

The news comes a day after the publication of a Daily Beast report detailing Iranian offers to Baghdad of among other things its army and spies in an effort to curb the advance of ISIS across the country:

While last week a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said his government received no formal requests for military assistance from Iraq’s government, senior Iraqi officials tell The Daily Beast that Iran has offered such support nonetheless.

“The offer to help us with everything we need has been made from the highest levels of the Iranian government,” a senior Iraqi official told The Daily Beast. This official stressed that Iran’s offer to assist Iraq’s fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS) was not conditional on Maliki making any immediate reforms or changes to his government.

The Daily Beast report will be read alongside the 2013 State Department country-by-country report [PDF] released last month, which slammed Tehran for supporting both Sunni and Shiite fighters across the region and globally.

Iranian efforts to sustain the Shiite expansionism of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki have alienated Iraqi Sunnis, making regions of the country hospitable for the current Sunni-led insurgency.

[Photo: CNN / YouTube]