Islamic State kills 24 in Baghdad, cuts road to Mosul

Blast targets Shi’ites in busy capital district

BAGHDAD/TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – An Islamic State car bomb killed 24 people in a busy square in Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City district on Monday, and the terrorists cut a key road north from the capital to Mosul.

An online statement distributed by Amaq news agency, which supports Islamic State, said the Sunni group had targeted a gathering of Shi’ites, whom it considers apostates subject to death. Sixty-seven people were wounded in the blast.

US-backed Iraqi forces are currently fighting to push Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul, but are facing fierce resistance. The group has lost most of the territory it seized in a blitz across northern and western Iraq in 2014.

Three bombs killed 29 people across the capital on Saturday, and an attack near the southern city of Najaf on Sunday left seven policemen dead. Monday’s blast in Sadr City hit a square where day laborers typically gather.

Nine of the victims were women in a passing minibus. Their charred bodies were visible inside the burned-out remains of the vehicle. Blood stained the ground nearby.

A separate blast near a hospital in central Baghdad killed one civilian and wounded nine, police and medical sources said.

“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 told reporters after meeting with visiting French President François Hollande.

Hollande said French soldiers serving in a US-led coalition against the jihadists in Iraq were preventing more mass killings at home.

Since the drive to recapture Mosul began on October 17, 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. 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 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.

The counter-terrorism service was also clearing North Karma district of remaining terrorists, 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.

Insurgents attacked an army barracks near Baiji, 180 km. 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 fired 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, 90 km. 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 Shi’ite militia fighters were killed and seven wounded when insurgents attacked their position with mortar rounds and machine guns, police sources said.