© Thaier Al-Sudani/ReutersVolunteers who have joined the Iraqi Army paraded in Baghdad on Sunday.
The embassy, a beige fortress on the banks of the Tigris River within the heavily secured Green Zone, where Iraqi government buildings are also situated, has the largest staff of any United States Embassy.
The exact number of people being evacuated from Baghdad - the American government prefers to say they are being "relocated" - was not disclosed. But the embassy will remain open, and most of its staff will remain, according to the State Department.
The United States has a staff of about 5,500 at the embassy and at two consulates in the north and south of Iraq.
"Some additional U.S. government security personnel will be added to the staff in Baghdad; other staff will be temporarily relocated - both to our consulate generals in Basra and Erbil and to the Iraq Support Unit in Amman," Jordan, Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement.
"Over all, a substantial majority of the U.S. Embassy presence in Iraq will remain in place, and the embassy will be fully equipped to carry out its national security mission," Ms. Psaki added.
An American military official said that fewer than 100 Marines and other military personnel had arrived in Baghdad to reinforce the embassy's security. The embassy staff members who are being evacuated are leaving on charter aircraft or commercial flights. But the military has planes available if necessary, the Pentagon said.
Other Americans in Iraq, particularly contractors working for companies that had been training the Iraqi military on weapons systems purchased from the United States, have already left.
Last week, in quick fashion, militants seized control of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, and then moved south. But over the weekend, their advance seemed to slow.
In response to the crisis, President Obama has said he is weighing a range of actions to help the Iraqi government turn back the insurgents, including airstrikes and other military aid.
Comment: who are these Iraqi insurgents that are mass executing iraqi soldiers and posting gruesome pictures ?
NATO's terror hordes in Iraq to be a pretext for Syria invasion
In actuality, ISIS is the product of a joint NATO-GCC conspiracy stretching back as far as 2007 where US-Saudi policymakers sought to ignite a region-wide sectarian war to purge the Middle East of Iran's arch of influence stretching from its borders, across Syria and Iraq, and as far west as Lebanon and the coast of the Mediterranean. ISIS has been harbored, trained, armed, and extensively funded by a coalition of NATO and Persian Gulf states within Turkey's (NATO territory) borders and has launched invasions into northern Syria with, at times, both Turkish artillery and air cover. The most recent example of this was the cross-border invasion by Al Qaeda into Kasab village, Latikia province in northwest Syria.
This year, when insurgents captured Falluja and other parts of western Anbar Province, the American government rushed guns, ammunition and Hellfire missiles to aid the Iraqis, but it has done little to stop the militants.
As American forces left Iraq at the end of 2011, the State Department planned to significantly increase its diplomatic presence in the country by establishing several fortified embassy branch offices defended by private security guards.
The Obama administration soon reconsidered those ambitions, chiefly because of the cost and feasibility. The consulates in Basra and Erbil remained open; another, in Kirkuk, was phased out; and a proposed outpost in Mosul was never opened.
After the troops left, only a small number of military personnel remained as part of an office of security cooperation at the embassy. They oversee a weapons sales program and provide limited mentoring for Iraqi forces.
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