Police said a vehicle packed with explosives blew up on Tuesday morning at a vegetable and fruit market in Rashdiyah town.
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It also follows two large-scale attacks claimed by the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) group which killed more than 300 people last week.
Iraqi government forces advancing on the Islamic State-held city of Mosul retook a village from IS on Tuesday and linked up along the Tigris river with army units pushing from a separate direction, Defence Minister Khalid al-Obeidi said.
An Iraqi security vehicle is pictured through a shattered windshield of a vehicle damaged at the site of auto bomb attack in Rashidiya a district north of Baghdad, Iraq, July 12, 2016.
US and Iraqi officials have touted such bombings as proof that battlefield setbacks are weakening Islamic State, but critics say a global uptick in suicide attacks attributed to the group suggests the opposite.
Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin was killed there in March in an IS rocket attack.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said the troops were “practising for a planned military parade for a specific occasion”.
The country is due to mark the anniversary of its 1958 overthrow of a Hashemite monarchy and the declaration of Iraq as a republic.
The ultimate goal was “the recapture of all of Iraqi territory by the Iraqi security forces, but of course Mosul is the biggest part of that”, Carter said. In addition to the capture of the airbase at Qayyarah, Iraqi forces backed by coalition air power and other support recently freed the city of Fallujah from ISIL’s control after previous gains in Ramadi, Hit and Rutbah, according to the release.
The deployment comes two years after President Barack Obama had vowed that, while the United States would help Iraq reclaim territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL), its efforts would “not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil”.
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