News / Iraq

Daesh kills 31 in overnight raids in Iraq’s Tikrit

Wednesday, 05 April 2017 9:25 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 05 April 2017 10:10 AM ]

This file photo shows the site of a car bomb attack in a crowded street in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on March 15, 2017. (By Reuters)

At least 31 people have been killed and more than 40 others wounded in attacks by the Daesh terrorist group in Iraq’s northern city of Tikrit, security forces have announced.

Around ten Daesh militants, in police uniforms and vehicles, managed to enter Tikrit overnight Tuesday, according to police colonel Khalid Mahmoud.

In one raid, they attacked a police checkpoint and the house of a police colonel, who was killed along with four members of his family. The assailants also wounded at least 40 people, including 14 police officers, security and medical sources said on Wednesday.

There were also a number of bodies belonging to civilians, killed in their shops, according to Nawfal Mustafa, a doctor at the city’s main hospital.

Among the militants, two detonated their explosive vests after being surrounded by police, and three others were killed in separate clashes.

Smoke rises from a shop after a bomb attack in Tikrit, April 2, 2015. (File photo)

Authorities declared a curfew in Tikrit on Wednesday since they believed the remaining five terrorists might still be hiding somewhere in the town. They said sporadic gunfire could be heard in the morning.

Daesh seized Tikrit, the capital of the Salahuddin Province in June 2014, before losing it to Iraqi forces in March 2015. The militants, however, continue to carry out attacks in the city and its outskirts. In an attack in March, dozens of people were killed in bomb explosions that targeted a wedding party in a village near Tikrit.

A number of other police forces and civilians were also killed in separate incidents in the country. A bomb exploded at the al-Washash neighborhood in the capital Baghdad, and killed at least seven people.

A magnetic bomb also targeted a vehicle used by Iraqi security forces in the city of Baquba, in the eastern province of Diyala, killing at least two police officers and wounding another.

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