80 killed, about 90 injured in Iraq attacks

As many as 80 people were killed and 88 wounded in a string of attacks witnessed in different parts of Iraq Thursday, security and medical sources said.

Also, Iraqi security forces re-established their control of Samarra city in Salahudin province which was seized by Sunni insurgents in the morning, the sources added.

As the troops carried out a major offensive, following fierce clashes, they managed to regain six neighbourhood in Samarra, some 120 km from Baghdad. These areas had been seized by groups believed to be linked to the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda breakaway group in Iraq, a source said.

At least nine policemen were killed and 45 people injured in the city when insurgents launched attacks on security checkpoints and police stations in the early hours.

In the early hours, dozens of insurgents entered the city and attacked the security checkpoints and police stations, killing up to nine policemen and wounding 45 people, the source said.

Some militants attacked a minister's house and killed three guards, the source added.

Major General Sabah al-Fatlawi, Commander of Samarra Operation Command, said his troops and helicopters killed 11 militants and destroyed over eight vehicles during



the morning battles.

Insurgents' attacks in Samarra prompted authorities in Nineveh province and its capital Mosul, some 400 km from Baghdad, to tighten security measures and imposed curfew in the city. It led to killing of some 40 militants, an official said.

Also in the day, a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a police checkpoint in Baiji city, some 200 km from Baghdad, leaving a police officer killed and four policemen wounded, a security source said.

Meanwhile, two soldiers were killed and five wounded as groups of gunmen attacked several army checkpoints in Baiji, the source said.

In Anbar province, air strikes, artillery and mortar shelling struck several neighbourhoods in the militant-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km from Baghdad, continued from midnight until Thursday morning and left eight people killed and nine wounded, a medical source said.

In another incident, three people were killed and six injured when three mortar rounds landed on the local government building in Tarmiyah town, some 40 km from Baghdad.

A soldier was killed and three were injured when a roadside bomb went off near an army patrol on a main road near Tarmiyah, a source said.

Separately, a civilian was killed and ten were injured when a car bomb detonated at the wholesale market of Jamilah in Baghdad's Sadr City district, a police source said.

In another incident, a civilian was killed and six were wounded in bomb blast in Mahmoudiyah city, some 30 km from Baghdad.