Dozens escape in Iraqi prison raid

Dozens of prisoners were on the loose yesterday after militants attacked a prison in the Iraqi city of Tikrit, leaving at least 13 policemen dead, officials said.
The violence at the prison comes after al-Qaeda's Iraqi front group announced a campaign to regain territory and said it aimed to help its jailed members escape.
Salaheddin provincial deputy governor Ahmed Abdul Jabbar told AFP by telephone that the Tikrit prison had been retaken from militants who seized it on Thursday night, but that 83 prisoners escaped.
A hospital official in Tikrit, the ancestral home of now-executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, said 13 police were killed and 34 wounded in the violence.
A source in the Salaheddin police command said, meanwhile, that 15 policemen and seven prisoners were killed, and put the number of escaped prisoners at about 100.
Accounts differed on the specifics of the unrest, but it appears militants attacked from outside the prison, while inmates may have seized weapons from guards inside.
A police lieutenant colonel said Thursday that a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at the gate of the prison, after which it was assaulted by gunmen.
Al-Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq said in July that it was launching a "new military campaign aimed at recovering territory."