Thousands of Shiite militiamen have paraded in Baghdad and several other cities in southern Iraq with heavy weaponry, signalling their readiness to take on Sunni militants who seized much of the country's north.

In Baghdad, about 20,000 men, many in combat gear, marched through the Sadr City district with assault rifles, machine guns, multiple rocket launchers and missiles. Similar parades were held in the southern cities of Amarah and Basra, with the militants in Basra displaying field artillery pieces hauled by heavy trucks.

The parades were staged by followers of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and came after the al Qaida breakaway Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and allied Sunni militants, captured a crossing on the Syria-Iraq border the day before.