Ramadan Al-Fatash
DPA
CAIRO — Security forces foiled an attempt by unknown gunmen to break into Iraq’s second-largest prison, an official said Saturday.
“One policeman and a number of gunmen were killed in the overnight attempt to storm the Badoush Prison,” Mohammed Ibrahim, a security official for the local council in the northern province of Nineveh, told the independent broadcaster Alsumaria News.
The prison had been attacked with mortar shells prior to the storming attempt, Ibrahim said.
“The prison guards have tightened security around the prison in anticipation of another attack,” he said.
Badoush Prison, located in the volatile city of Mosul, has been the target of several attacks in recent months to free inmates imprisoned on terrorism-related offenses.
Last year, more than 500 prisoners, mostly from al-Qaeda, escaped two prisons in central Iraq after gunmen mounted coordinated attacks that left 36 people dead.
The deterioration of security and a surge in attacks in Iraq in recent months have raised fears of a return to the violence that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007.
According to UN estimates, 8,868 people were killed in violence in 2013, Iraq’s highest annual death toll in five years.