Iraqi forces free hostages held in city council

Iraqi security forces Tuesday freed many people being held hostage by suicide bombers who had stormed the city council of Samarra in Iraq's Salahudin province earlier in the day, leaving five people dead and 48 wounded, a provincial police source said.

On Tuesday afternoon, Iraqi forces broke into the building and engaged in a fierce fight with four suicide bombers who blew themselves up, the source told Xinhua.

Earlier in the day, four suicide bombers wearing explosive vests stormed Samarra's local government building in the city, some 120 km north of Baghdad, after they detonated a car bomb at the entrance and took many workers and civilians inside hostage, the source said.

Later, reinforcements rushed to the scene and surrounded the city council.

They then carried out a counter-attack to free the hostages and take back control of the building, the source added.

Three of the city council members were among those wounded, he said.

Salahudin province is Sunni-dominated and its capital Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, is the hometown of former president Saddam Hussein.