BAGHDAD: A wave of car bombings in mostly Shia districts of the Iraqi capital killed more than 60 people late yesterday, while in northern Iraq, heavy fighting between security forces and militants entered a second day, killing 59 people.
In Anbar province, jihadists took hundreds of students and staff hostage at a university in the city of Ramadi, sparking an assault led by special forces in which they were freed, officials said.
In Baghdad, there were a dozen blasts in total, the deadliest of which occurred in the Bayaa neighbourhood, where a car bomb killed 23 people, many of them young people playing billiards.
Other bombs went off near a cinema, a popular juice shop and a Shia mosque.
In the northern city of Mosul, heavy fighting between militants and security forces entered its second day yesterday, killing 21 police and 38 militants, an officer and mortuary employee said.
Dr Mohammed Khalaf said the morgue where he works in the city had received 80 bodies since Friday, and had no space for more.
Fighting erupted in Mosul on Friday morning and continued into the night, while twin suicide bombings targeted a minority group east of the city, and soldiers shot dead suicide bombers to its south.
At least 36 people were killed in Friday’s violence in Mosul and elsewhere in surrounding Nineveh province.
In Ramadi, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant gunmen infiltrated Anbar University from the nearby Al Tasha area, killed its guards and then blew up a bridge leading to its main gate, police said.
A journalist said special forces spearheaded an assault to retake the campus, sparking clashes involving heavy gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades.
Security forces “liberated all of the male and female student hostages from the dormitories in Anbar University” and regained control of checkpoints at its entrances, Deputy Interior Minister Adnan Al Assadi said in an emailed statement.
And interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said that all the hostages had been freed, without giving casualty figures.
The journalist saw security forces bring in buses to take weeping hostages away from one of the women’s dorms, but said fighting at the university continued afterwards.
Police officers put the number of hostages at the start of the incident at 2,500, though that figure could not be independently confirmed.
Before security forces moved in, a student said by telephone from inside the university that she and other women were ordered to gather in one place, after which the militants’ leader addressed them.
“We will teach you a lesson you will never forget,” he said, according to the student’s account.
The student said the Islamist militant branded the university a “brothel” where women wore make-up, listened to music and mixed with men.
Fear of another attack, she said, will likely discourage students from returning to their studies.
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