DHAKA: Masked gunmen remained in control of Iraq’s Fallujah on Wednesday even as traffic police returned to the city’s streets after a jihadist group urged Sunnis to keep fighting the Shia-led government.

Fallujah and parts of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi farther west have been outside government hands for days, the first time militants have exercised such open control in major cities since the height of the insurgency that followed the 2003 US-led invasion.

Earlier on Wednesday, two areas of Fallujah saw brief clashes and shelling, witnesses said, but it was not immediately clear who was involved in the fighting.

The traffic police, whose sole responsibility is directing vehicles and controlling intersections, were back on the streets in several parts of central Fallujah, an Agence France-Presse journalist reported, says The Straits Times.

BDST: 1913 HRS, JAN 08, 2014
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor