The blast at the entrance to the town of Khales also wounded 37, according to Colonel Ghalib Al Attiyah, the Diyala province police spokesman, and health department spokesman Faris Al Azzawi.
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A security source said that 22 people had been injured in the explosion on Monday morning at checkpoint about two miles west of Khalis town centre.
A day after the suicide attack in Baghdad that claimed 21 lives and injured many, another area in the terror-stricken country is rocked by a suicide rampage.
Iraqi security forces and civilians gather at the site after a suicide auto bomb occurred in the Karrada shopping area in Baghdad, Iraq on Sunday.
Bomb explosions rocked Baghdad as well on Monday, killing at least nine and wounding 26, reported police.
The militant Sunni “Islamic State” (IS) group claimed responsibility for the checkpoint attack in an online statement, but did not immediately claim the Baghdad blasts. Commercial areas and big gatherings of Shiite followers are among the most common targets for the extremist group. ISIS has stepped up attacks across the country even as it incurs battlefield setbacks in the country’s north and west. Experts have warned there may be more such attacks as it continues to lose ground.
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The ultra-hardline militants have lost much of the territory they seized in 2014 and the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake this year the northern city of Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq. AP material published by LongIsland.com, is done so with explicit permission. This includes the preparation of derivative works of, or the incorporation of such content into other works. Please see our terms of service for more information.
