An Islamic State car bomb killed 24 people in a busy square in Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City district on Monday, and the militants temporarily cut a key road north from the capital to Mosul, their last major stronghold in Iraq.
An online statement distributed by Amaq news agency, which supports Islamic State, also known as Isis, said the ultra-hardline Sunni group had targeted a gathering of Shia Muslims, whom it considers apostates.
Sixty-seven people were wounded in the blast. Three other attacks across the city killed eight more people, bringing the death toll from bombings in Baghdad to more than 60 in the past three days.
It was not clear who was responsible. In addition, seven policemen were killed near the southern city of Najaf on Sunday. The upsurge in violence comes as US-backed Iraqi forces are fighting to push Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul, where it is putting up fierce resistance.
The group has lost most of the territory it seized in a blitz across northern and western Iraq in 2014, and ceding Mosul would probably spell the end of its self-styled caliphate. But the militants would still be capable of fighting a guerrilla-style insurgency in Iraq, and plotting or inspiring attacks on the West.
“The terrorists will attempt to attack civilians in order to make up for their losses, but we assure the Iraqi people and the world that we are able to end terrorism and shorten its life,” prime minister Haider al-Abadi said after talks with visiting French president Francois Hollande.
Burnt-out remains
Monday’s blast in Sadr City hit a square where day labourers typically gather. Nine of the victims were women in a passing minibus, whose charred bodies were visible inside the burnt-out remains of the vehicle. Blood stained the ground nearby. A parked car bomb targeting a Sunni religious figure near a mosque in western Baghdad killed five people and another blast close to a hospital in the centre killed one civilian and wounded nine, police and medical sources said.
In the southeastern Zaafraniya district, two more people were killed and seven wounded when a car bomb exploded.
Since the drive to recapture Mosul began on October 17th, elite forces have retaken a quarter of the city in the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Mr Abadi has said the group will be driven out of the country by April.
Clashes continued in and around Mosul on Monday. The counter-terrorism service (CTS) blew up several Islamic State car bombs before they reached their targets, and linked up with the Rapid Response forces, an elite Interior Ministry unit, said spokesman Sabah al-Numani.
CTS was also clearing North Karama district of remaining militants, the fourth area the unit has retaken in the past week, he said. Islamic State targeted military positions away from the main battlefield, killing at least 16 pro-government fighters and cutting a strategic road linking the city to Baghdad, although authorities later said the security forces had regained control of it.
Four soldiers killed
Militants attacked an army barracks near Baiji, 180km north of the capital, killing four soldiers and wounding 12 people, including Sunni tribal fighters, army and police sources said.
They seized weapons there and launched mortars at nearby Shirqat, forcing security forces to impose a curfew and close schools and offices in the town, according to local officials and security sources. Shirqat mayor Ali Dodah said Islamic State seized three checkpoints on the main road linking Baiji to Shirqat following the attacks.
Shelling in Shirqat had killed at least two children, he told Reuters by phone. In a separate incident, gunmen broke into a village near Udhaim, 90km north of Baghdad, where they executed nine Sunni tribal fighters with shots to the head, police and medical sources said.
In the same area, at least three pro-government Shia militia fighters were killed and seven wounded when militants attacked their position with mortar rounds and machine guns, police sources said.
– (Reuters)