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Iraqi city of Kirkuk under attack by militants | Iraqi city of Kirkuk under attack by militants |
(about 1 hour later) | |
Islamic State militants have launched a commando raid on the Iraqi city of Kirkuk in an apparent attempt to distract Iraqi and Kurdish forces converging on the group’s stronghold of Mosul. | |
The attack was repelled by local security forces, who said six of the militants had been killed in the operation. | |
Isis claimed responsibility for the assault on its news agency service, Aamaq. | |
“Security forces, the peshmerga and the counter-terrorism forces have established complete control over the security situation in Kirkuk,” Najmeddine Karim, the city’s governor, said. “Daesh [Isis] sleeper cells carried out attacks against security sites and headquarters this morning in Kirkuk.” | |
Kirkuk, 236km (146 miles) north of Baghdad, is an oil-rich town that has emerged as a potential source of tension in a post-Isis Iraq. | |
In another attack reported by AFP on Friday, three bombers infiltrated a power plant being built by an Iranian company near Dibis, a town about 40km north-west of Kirkuk. | |
“Three suicide bombers attacked the power plant at around 6am, killing 12 Iraqi administrators and engineers and four Iranian technicians,” Dibis mayor Abdullah Nureddin al-Salehi told AFP. | |
Iraqi forces, alongside Sunni tribal fighters, Kurdish peshmerga paramilitaries and Shia militias, this week launched a long-awaited campaign to wrest back control of Mosul, the largest urban centre under Isis control. The arrayed forces have made steady advances in clearing militants from surrounding towns and villages, before what is likely to be a protracted street battle to reclaim the embattled city from up to 6,000 Isis fighters. | |
Friday’s Isis attacks appeared to be aimed at distracting some of the forces arrayed for the assault on Mosul. Kirkuk is a town with a mixed Shia, Sunni and Kurdish population, and there are fears that once Isis is defeated the vacuum could become a flashpoint for power and territory struggles over its oilfields. | |
Iraq’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi, announced the launch of the Mosul operation last weekend. He has since said that the offensive was going faster than planned. |