Al-Maliki: Iraqi forces foil attack
Iraq’s prime minister has said security forces have thwarted an attempt by an armed group to occupy districts in western Baghdad, amid renewed violence in the capital.
Nuri al-Maliki told a session of parliament on Wednesday: “They tried but they failed. Nobody can threaten the security of Iraqis. Our forces started to creep into these areas and to control them.”
Al-Maliki did not say which group was behind the plan.
Earlier, a suicide bomber walked into a restaurant in eastern Baghdad and blew himself up, killing seven people and wounding 20, police said.
In some of the worst communal violence in Baghdad since the US-led invasion, Shia fighters roamed a mostly Sunni neighbourhood in western Baghdad on Sunday, killing 40 people in a rampage that followed an attack on a Shia mosque there.
Clashes between Sunni and Shia fighters also erupted in western Sunni al-Ghazaliya district over the weekend.