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IS militants attack Iraqi city of Kirkuk as Mosul offensive continues | |
(about 1 hour later) | |
Islamic State (IS) militants have raided government buildings in and around the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. | |
Iraqi media reported that suicide bombers had attacked police stations and a power station, but that security forces had repelled the assaults. | |
A news agency affiliated to IS claimed its fighters had broken into Kirkuk's town hall and seized a central hotel. | |
The attacks come as Iraqi pro-government forces continue an offensive to retake IS-held Mosul, to the north. | |
IS militants were reported to have set fire to a chemical plant south of Mosul as they retreated on Thursday. | |
Sources said they started the fire at the sulphur plant in al-Mishraq deliberately when they were being pushed out of the area by security forces. | |
Dawn attack | Dawn attack |
There are conflicting reports about the scale and extent of the attack on Kirkuk. | |
A local TV channel broadcast footage of black smoke rising over the city, with automatic gunfire audible. | |
The Beirut-based newspaper al-Sumaria reported that during the dawn attack, three suicide bombers had blown themselves up. | |
A district police chief, Brig Gen Sarhad Qadir, told the BBC that militants and a number of suicide bombers had attacked Kirkuk's emergency police building, an old police directorate building, another police station, a political party headquarters and a power station in nearby Dibis that was still under construction. | |
"All of the militants who attacked the police emergency building and the old building of the Kirkuk police directorate have been killed, but a number of other militants are still in Dumez district," he said. | |
Kirkuk police sources said three Iranian workers at the power station were killed, along with eight Iraqis. | |
Kirkuk's governor, Najm al-Din Karim, told the Kurdish news agency, Rudaw, that Kurdish Peshmerga and counter-terrorism forces were completely in control of the situation, and said the attackers were from IS sleeper cells. | |
Security forces had killed six suicide bombers, Mr Karim added. | |
A security source meanwhile told the BBC there were ongoing clashes between IS militants and Peshmerga in the south and south-west of Kirkuk. | |
Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic city that is located about 180 miles (290km) north of the capital Baghdad and 105 miles (170km) south-east of Mosul. It is claimed both by Iraq's central government and by the country's Kurds. |