Amid Mosul fight, militants hit north
Islamic State attacks appear aimed at diverting forces.
Islamic State KIRKUK, IRAQ — militants armed with assault rifles and explosives attacked in and around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early Friday, in an assault that appeared aimed at diverting Iraqi security forces from a massive offensive against the Islamic State-held city of Mosul.
At least 13 workers, including four Iranians, were killed when the militants stormed a power plant north of Kirkuk and then blew themselves up. A local TV reporter was killed by a sniper while covering the clashes in Kirkuk city, which were still raging after sundown.
Multiple explosions rocked the city, and gunfire rang out from the area around the provincial headquarters where the fighting was concentrated. Smoke billowed over the city, and the streets were largely deserted out of fear of militant snipers.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi condemned the Kirkuk assault, which he said killed four Iranians and wounded three others, according to the official IRNA news agency. It was not immediately clear if Iranians were targeted in other attacks.
There was no immediate word on casualties among other civilians or Kurdish forces in Kirkuk city.
Kirkuk is some 100 miles from the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, where Iraqi forces have been waging a wide-scale offensive since Monday.
The Islamic State has in the past resorted to suicide bombings in and around Baghdad in response to battlefield losses elsewhere in the country. But the complex assault in Kirkuk more closely resembled those carried out by the Taliban in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Kirkuk is an oil-rich city claimed by both Iraq’s central government and the country’s largely autonomous Kurdish region. Kurdish forces assumed full control of Kirkuk in the summer of 2014, as Iraq’s army and police crumbled in the face of a lightning advance by the Islamic State.
Kemal Kerkuki, a senior commander of Kurdish peshmerga forces west of Kirkuk, said the town where his base is located outside the city also came under attack early Friday, but that his forces repelled it.
He said the Islamic State maintains sleeper cells in Kirkuk and the surrounding villages.
Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition launched a multipronged assault this week to retake Mosul and surrounding areas from the Islamic State. The operation is the largest undertaken by the Iraqi military since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.