Killing of Qaeda leaders 'won't end Iraq attacks'

BAGHDAD — Al-Qaeda’s branch in Iraq claimed responsibility Tuesday for audacious raids on two high-security prisons on the outskirts of Baghdad this week that killed dozens and set free hundreds of inmates, including some of its followers. The statement issued in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Iraq, was posted on an online jihadist forum. It said months of planning went into the highly co-ordinated assaults on the prisons in Abu Ghraib and Taji that began late Sunday.

Al-Qaeda has confirmed the deaths of its top two Iraq commanders in a joint US-Iraqi military raid, a US monitoring group said, days after a wave of apparent revenge attacks killed 58 Iraqis.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Masri, who had direct links with Osama bin Laden, were reported by Iraqi and US officials to have been killed in a shootout on April 18 near Tikrit in central Iraq.

Iraqi authorities said on Thursday that the arrest of Al-Qaeda in Iraq's Baghdad chief six weeks ago triggered a series of events that culminated in the killing of the jihadist network's top commanders.Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the political leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), and Abu Ayub al-Masri, an Egyptian militant and the insurgent group's self-styled "minister of war," died on Sunday, according to Iraqi and US officials.

A car bomb in executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's home city and two other attacks killed eight people, including four police officers, and wounded 14 others on Thursday, police said.Six people, including three police, were killed by a car bomb that targeted a patrol in the centre of Tikrit, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Baghdad, said Colonel Hathem Akram, while 11 people, six of them police, were wounded.A fourth policeman was killed in Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad, by an unknown gunman, local police said.

AFP Photo / Handout / Site Intelligence GroupAn undated handout picture provided by SITE Intelligence Group on February 23, 2014 allegedly shows Syrian Islamist leader Abu Khalid al-Suri

By Suadad al-SalhyBAGHDAD (Reuters) - Sunni insurgents clashed with troops and briefly occupied a town in northern Iraq on Friday night, the latest development in an escalating turf war with the Shi'ite-led government that has killed at least 21 people in the past two days, police said.Dozens of militants in SUVs drove into the small town of al-Sainiyah near Baiji, some 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, after bombing the local police headquarters and fought troops for several hours overnight, witnesses said on Saturday.

A car bomb in executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's home city and three other attacks killed 10 people, including four policemen, and wounded 24 on Thursday, security officials said.Six people, including three police, were killed by a car bomb that targeted a patrol in the centre of Tikrit, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Baghdad, said Colonel Hathem Akram, while 11 people, six of them police, were wounded.

Six bombs rocked Baghdad, killing at least 35 people, the second time the capital came under attack in three days, fuelling fears insurgents are making a return due to a political impasse.The explosions destroyed residential buildings in mostly Shiite neighbourhoods, and a security spokesman said Iraq was in "open war" with the remnants of Al-Qaeda and loyalists of executed dictator Saddam Hussein."Six bomb attacks in several neighbourhoods of Baghdad occurred, and seven buildings collapsed," an interior ministry official told AFP.