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The militants
wore police uniforms and used a police vehicle to enter the
city, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police colonel Khalid
Mahmoud told Reuters. He said there were around 10 attackers,
including two suicide bombers.
Islamic State's Amaq news agency said seven suicide fighters
attacked a police position and the home of the head of the
city's counter-terrorism service, who was killed. The assailants
blew themselves up when they ran out of ammunition, it said.
A total of 31 bodies were taken to hospital, including 14
policemen, said Nawfal Mustafa, a doctor at the city's main
hospital. The death toll rose during the morning as the bodies
of civilians killed in their shops were found.
The attacks targeted a police checkpoint and the house of a
police colonel, who was killed with four members of his family,
officers said.
Two suicide attackers detonated their vests when surrounded by
police, and three others were killed in separate clashes.
Five militants are thought to be hiding and Mahmoud said Tikrit
authorities had declared a curfew on Wednesday. Sporadic gunfire
could be heard in the morning.
A U.S.-backed offensive is underway to dislodge Islamic State
from the remaining districts under its control in Mosul, 225 km
away, the group's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.
The militants overran about a third of Iraq's territory nearly
three years ago, capturing most Sunni Arab cities located north
and west of Baghdad, including Tikrit.
Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias drove the
militants away from Tikrit two years ago. Tikrit is the home
region of Saddam Hussein, the former president toppled in the
2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
(Reporting by Ghazwan Hassan and Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Maher
Chmaytelli; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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