AT LEAST 17 PEOPLE, including the man believed to have planned an attack on a church in Baghdad last year, have died after prisoners attempted to overpower the guards at a prison in Baghdad.

Al Jazeera reports that Abu Huzaifa Al Batawai was leader of the most powerful al-Qaeda faction in Iraq and officials claim he sparked the prison attack when he grabbed a guard’s gun as he was being led to an interrogation room.

Six police and 11 prisoners died, according to Iraqi officials. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the head of counter-terrorism for a district in Baghdad is among the officers who were killed.

Baghdad security spokesperson Major General Qassim Atta said that the incident had been “planned well in advance” and said that those involved included “high-level members” of the al-Qaeda group, the Islamic State of Iraq.

The facility in central Baghdad holds 220 prisoners and, as a ministry of the interior compound, was considered one of the most secure in Iraq. However, the New York Times reports that Iraqi politicians have been quick to criticise security measures at the facility; grenades seized by the prisoners were sitting on a table.

More than 50 people were killed in the attack on a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad last October.