Eighteen dead as Isil attacks power station in Kirkuk

ISIL militants attacked a power station and other buildings in the north-eastern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk early yesterday, killing at least 18 people, security sources said.

Fighting raged through the afternoon as authorities called a curfew, saying some of the attackers were still holed up in a hotel and a mosque in the middle of the city, which has been held by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters since 2014 after the Iraqi army withdrew.

The assaults came four days after Kurdish and Iraqi forces started an offensive more than 100 miles further north to push Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant out of Mosul.

Bursts of machine gun fire could be heard on video footage of the two-floor abandoned hotel in Kirkuk. Cars burned nearby, filling the street with black smoke.

Most of the dead were members of the security forces and workers at the power station, including two Iranians who were carrying out maintenance, the security sources said.

At least eight militants were also killed, either by blowing themselves up or in clashes with the security forces, the sources added.

Crude oil production facilities were not targeted and the power supply continued uninterrupted in the city.

Isil claimed the attacks in online statements as Kurdish Peshmerga reinforcements arrived in the city.

The assailants in Kirkuk came from outside the city, said Lt Gen Talib Shaghati, the head of Iraq’s Special Forces, speaking on a frontline east of Mosul.

A member of the Kurdish Peshmerga runs in the street in Kirkuk after an attack by Isil militants. Reinforcements have been sent to the city which was targeted in the wake of an army offensive on Mosul, another northern city