Captors and hostages killed in police station shoot-out

At least 13 people were killed Monday when Iraqi security forces tried to rescue a group of officers and civilians taken hostage by suicide bombers in a police station.

By News Wires (text)

REUTERS – At least 13 people were killed on Monday after the Iraqi army stormed a local government compound in Anbar province to rescue hostages seized there by at least six suicide bombers, police sources said.

It was not immediately clear if the casualties were killed during the initial attack or during fighting when soldiers retook the complex.

At least two policemen were killed and three wounded in the initial attack by suicide bombers on the complex in the town of Baghdadi in Anbar province, about 190 km (120 miles) west of the capital Baghdad.

"Security forces now control part of municipal council building, and there is fighting going on between security forces and the attackers," Hikmet Khalaf, deputy governor of Anbar, told Reuters by telephone. "Some staff from the municipal council and the police are still hostage."

Anbar, a vast mostly Sunni Muslim province in western Iraq, is the former stronghold of Iraq's al-Qaeda affiliates.

Suicide bombers killed four people last month in an attack on another government complex in Ramadi, also in Anbar.

Violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the height of sectarian strife in 2006-2007, but Sunni Islamist insurgents and radical Shi'ite militias still carry out daily attacks, even as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw at the end of the year.