Iraq police storm mall, end deadly siege

Iraqi police stormed a mall in a northern city that Al-Qaeda gunmen used to launch an attack on a nearby police station, killing three militants and ending an hourslong standoff as attacks elsewhere left seven dead Thursday, authorities said.

Armed fighters held off police from their rooftop position on six-story Jawahir mall in Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, overnight, throwing down grenades and firing on officers and civilians who tried to flee the fighting. Officers raided the mall Thursday morning before dawn, killing the militants, said Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir, Kirkuk's police commander.

No security forces or civilians were wounded in that fighting, Qadir said, though it left large portions of the mall burned. Eleven storekeepers hid inside the mall during the attack, scared to leave, he said.

The fighting in Kirkuk began Wednesday, when authorities said a car bomb exploded at the gates of the Police Intelligence Department. A suicide bomber on foot entered the station and detonated his explosives after that, officials said. The gunmen on the mall's roof then opened fire down on the station, they said.

The police station attack killed five officers and two civilians, while wounding some 70 people, Qadir said. However, those figures have yet to be confirmed.

"This is a very bold attack," said an Al Jazeera source who could not be named for security reasons. "Some local sources are saying that 25 people have died, but others say it is much higher." 

In a statement posted on an extremist website Thursday, the Iraqi branch of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Kirkuk attacks, saying six suicide bombers took part in the assault on the police station and the mall.

"A suicide bomber exploded his car bomb at the gate of the headquarters, paving the way for his brothers. Then, three attackers stormed the headquarters and started to reap the heads of the tyrants by using assault rifles and hand grenades ... then they set off their explosive belts," the group said.

It said the gunmen in the mall used explosives to kill themselves as police launched their raid.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, though it was posted on a website commonly used by armed groups and its style was consistent with earlier Al-Qaeda statements.

Meanwhile Thursday, police said gunmen wearing military uniforms stormed the house of a police major in Arej village just south of Mosul, about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The gunmen killed the police major and his two sons, officials said.

In western Baghdad, a bomb blast on a commercial street killed two people and wounded six, police said. An explosion near shops in the town of Madian, just south of Baghdad, also killed two people and wounded six, officials said.

The coordinated attack on the police station and shopping mall is the latest in a surge of violence across Iraq, which has claimed more than 6,200 lives this year.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press