BAGHDAD – Eighteen people, including an al-Qaeda leader and an Iraqi counter-terrorism official, died in a battle between inmates and security officers during an attempted jailbreak in Baghdad yesterday, security officials said.
Huthaifa al-Batawi, known as al-Qaeda's "Emir of Baghdad" and accused of a deadly attack on a Catholic church, was killed along with 10 other senior al-Qaeda militants, Baghdad's security spokesman Maj Gen Qassim al-Moussawi said.
The skirmish at an interior ministry counter-terrorism unit jail complex in Karrada district began when a prisoner grabbed a gun from a guard, he added. – (Reuters)
