KUWAIT CITY, June 30. /ITAR-TASS/. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has announced it is establishing a caliphate on the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. The announcement came on Sunday, June 29, right after Ramadan fasting.

ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani said the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was proclaimed as caliph.

At the beginning of June 2014, ISIS militants launched an offensive on several cities in the north or Iraq. The radicals seized several provinces in Iraq and started moving in the direction of the country’s capital Baghdad, threatening the existence of the state of Iraq. The government announced the mobilization of volunteers, and the number of self-defense forces has reached 80,000 people.