ISIL bomb attacks kill 17 civilians in Baghdad

Suicide bombers continue their bloody onslaught on busy commercial areas in Shiite neighbourhoods of Iraqi capital

BAGHDAD // At least 17 civilians were killed in the Iraqi capital yesterday when two suicide bomb attacks ripped through busy commercial areas of Shiite neighbourhoods.

ISIL claimed both attacks, saying they were aimed at Shiite militia members.

The deadliest attack took place in the eastern New Baghdad neighbourhood, where a bomber approached a group of building workers and set off his suicide vest, killing 11 civilians, a police officer said.

But some witnesses said the area was also hit by a roadside bomb.

At least 28 civilians were wounded in the attack and nearby shops and cars were damaged.

Hours later, another suicide attacker blew himself up in an outdoor market in the south-western neighbourhood of Bayaa, killing six shoppers and wounding 21, police said.

ISIL and other Sunni extremists consider Shiites to be heretics, and the group often targets civilians in Shiite areas of Baghdad.

Checkpoints in the capital frequently cause enormous traffic jams that inconvenience citizens, but they consistently fail to prevent attacks.

For years, most checkpoints featured fake bomb detec- tors that have now finally been scrapped, and guards wave most cars through unchecked.

Yesterday’s violence came two days after another suicide bombing claimed by ISIL killed six people in western Baghdad.

A day before that, bomb and gun attacks claimed by the extremist group killed 12 people in the area of Tikrit, a city north of the capital.

Iraqi forces have regained much of the territory seized by ISIL in June 2014 and are now preparing for a push on the city of Mosul – the biggest urban area still under the extremists’ control.

But the group has maintained the ability to carry out attacks in government-controlled areas even as it loses ground, and it is likely to increasingly turn to such tactics if it loses Mosul, Iraq’s second city.

Iraqi officials say they plan to retake the city, which lies about 360 kilometres north-west of Baghdad, by the end of the year.

If Mosul is retaken, it would be a nearly complete reversal of the extremists’ lightning sweep across Iraq and Syria in 2014.

The group would be left holding only a few pockets of territory in Iraq.