Baghdad bombings kill 25 as Falluja siege continues
ISIS video shows Assyrian temple blown up in Iraq
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Two suicide bombings that killed about 25 people in Baghdad on Thursday were claimed by Islamic State, whose stronghold of Falluja near the capital is surrounded by Iraqi forces that are now advancing on the city.
ISIS said one attack was carried out with a car laden with explosives and the second with an explosive vest.
Iraqi forces began an offensive against Falluja, 50 km. west of Baghdad on May 23 after a series of deadly bombings hit Shi’ite districts of the capital. The troops began advancing on Wednesday against the jihadists inside the city, after completing its encirclement last week.
A police officer said a suicide car bomb had targeted a commercial street of the New Baghdad neighborhood in the east of the capital, killing 17 people and wounding over 50.
A man wearing an explosive belt blew himself up at checkpoint near the barracks of Taji, just north of Baghdad, killing seven soldiers and wounding more than 20, he added.
Islamic State “has a long experience in establishing small multiple networks that have the ability to operate independently from each other,” said Baghdad-based analyst and former army general Jasim al-Bahadli.
Falluja is a historic bastion of the Sunni insurgency, first against the US occupation of Iraq, in 2003, and then against the Shi’ite-led authorities that took over the country.
Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said last week that he expected that the recovery of Falluja would take time as ISIS fighters had dug tunnels and planted bombs in roads and houses to impede the military advance.
Meanwhile Islamic State insurgents have posted a video showing a 3,000-yearold temple being blown up at the Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq, in their latest assault on some of the world’s greatest archeological and cultural treasures.
The United Nations confirmed in a statement on Wednesday evening that satellite imagery showed “extensive damage to the main entrance” of the temple of Nabu, the Babylonian god of wisdom.
Nimrud was a 13th-century BCE Assyrian city, located 30 km. south of the modern city of Mosul, which ISIS seized control of in June 2014.
The date of the Islamic State video was unclear.
It also showed scenes of bulldozers razing the ancient Gate of Nergal, part of the historic Nineveh city wall in Mosul, which was reported earlier this year.
A bearded man in the video said that the destruction was meant to prevent Muslims from returning to idolatry. The group considers all pre-Islamic culture idolatrous, along with any religion outside its own radical interpretation of Sunni Islam.
As well as destroying Assyrian and Roman-era sites in northern Iraq, it blew up temples and other ancient buildings in the desert city of Palmyra in neighboring Syria. It is also suspected of raising funds from selling artifacts.
The latest evidence of destruction comes as the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga forces are preparing an offensive to retake Mosul with support from the US-led coalition.
In the last two years archeologists say Islamic State has inflicted incalculable damage to historic sites which they say form part of the world’s shared history.