Iranians among 52 killed in Iraq attacks claimed by Daesh
NASIRIYAH, Iraq: Gunmen and suicide car bombers on Thursday killed at least 52 people, including Iranians, near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, in an attack claimed by Daesh.
The attackers struck at midday, opening fire on a restaurant before getting into a car and blowing themselves up at a nearby security checkpoint, officials said.
Security sources said the attackers were disguised as members of Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi, a paramilitary alliance which has fought alongside the army and police against Daesh in northern Iraq.
The toll from the attacks was 52 dead and 91 wounded, said Abdel Hussein Al-Jabri, deputy health chief for the mainly Shiite province of Dhiqar, of which Nasiriyah is the capital.
Al-Jabri said that many of the wounded were in serious condition.
The area targeted is used by Shiites and visitors from neighboring Iran headed for the cities of Najaf and Karbala further north, although Dhiqar has previously been spared the worst of Iraq’s violence.
Daesh claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement carried by its Amaq propaganda arm.
It said several suicide bombers had staged the assault on a restaurant and a security checkpoint, killing dozens of people.
The toll makes it the deadliest Daesh attack in Iraq since pro-government forces drove the terrorists out of second city Mosul in July.
Thursday’s attacks come as Iraqi forces backed by tribal fighters close in one of the last Daesh bastions in the country: Al-Qaim area on the border with war-ravaged Syria.
The group’s only other stronghold is Hawija, in Kirkuk province some 300 km north of Baghdad.
Daesh has suffered a string of defeats on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, leaving in tatters the cross-border “caliphate” it declared in 2014.