BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials say militants have stormed a government building in a city north of Baghdad, killing at least six people. Police officers say two suicide bombers first blew themselves up on Tuesday at the entrance to the local council in Samara, paving the way for five other attackers to storm inside after detonating a parked car bomb. The officers say security forces quickly arrived at the scene, besieged the building and after a two-hour gunbattle, killed all the attackers and freed an unspecified number of people who had been trapped inside. Among those killed in the attack were three policemen and at least three civilians. The officials say 34 people were wounded. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to media. The attack in Samarra follows a similar incident in Tikrit, another city in the mostly Sunni Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad, in which militants detonated a car bomb and seized the city council headquarters on December 16. Security forces ultimately freed the Tikrit hostages, but a city council member and two police were killed. The following week, on December 23, suicide bombers attacked the headquarters of a local television station in Tikrit, killing five journalists. Salaheddin province is also home to the Sulaiman Bek area, where militants repeatedly battled security forces for control earlier this month. Attacks in other areas of Iraq killed two security forces members on Tuesday — a Sahwa militiaman in Kirkuk province and a policeman in Mosul. Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian violence in which tens of thousands died. The year-long surge in violence in Iraq has been driven by widespread discontent among the minority Sunni Arab community, and by the bloody civil war in neighbouring Syria. The Iraqi government also faces a two-month crisis in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, where it has lost all of the city of Fallujah as well as shifting parts of provincial capital Ramadi to anti-government fighters. – Agencies
