Worldwide desk – More than 50 people were killed in attacks by suspected Islamic State suicide bombers and gunmen in Baghdad and adjoining towns, officials said Monday.
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In Baghdad, police and medical sources said seven people, including two policemen, were killed in a vehicle bomb blast near the Jawaher Mall in the predominately Shiite district of Jadida.
However, Iraq has also been gripped by sectarian violence mostly between Shiites and Sunnis that has been exacerbated by the rise of the militant group.
At least four police were among those killed in the assault, which lasted around an hour and a half, according to the police and medical officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
Two bombs later went off in the eastern town of Muqdadiya, where at least 23 people were killed and 51 injured.
Twin blasts killed 20 people at a cafe, and attackers subsequently blew up multiple Sunni mosques and burned houses and shops, officers said. In the summer of 2014, the Islamic State group blitzed across large swaths of the country’s north and west, capturing Iraq’s second-largest city of Mosul and the majority of the western Anbar province.
The ministry source had said earlier that the attackers entered the shopping centre with a number of civilians as hostages.
Iraqis gather after the mall attack in Baghdad, where 18 people died and at least 50 were injured. Seven others were killed in a separate bombing in the capital, which has not been claimed by any group so far. “They are trying to distract the forces by carrying out attacks inside Baghdad”, said Shimmari.
Brigadier Qasim al-Anbuki, the local head of police intelligence, was leading a force to check tips about a suspected auto bomb parked on a highway linking Baghdad to eastern Diyala province, where Baquba is located.
Islamic State claimed the attack saying that it targeted “rejectionist” – a derogatory term the group uses to describe Shia Muslims, and said that there was “worse to come”.
ISIS also launched a pair of bombings against a cafe in Muqdadiyah, near the city’s casino, killing at least 24 and wounding 52 others.
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The attack comes two weeks after the Islamic State was driven out of the western city of Ramadi by Iraqi government troops.
