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| Iraq |
| 15 killed in Baghdad bomb blast |
| 2014-08-27 |
[ARABNEWS] A boom-mobile went kaboom!on Tuesday in a busy area in eastern Baghdad, killing as many as 15 people, officials said, the latest in a series of attacks to shake the Iraqi capital as the government struggles to dislodge Lions of Islam from areas in the country's west and north. The explosives-laden car went off during the morning rush hour in the main commercial area of the New Baghdad district. It was parked close to outdoor pet and vegetable markets and a traffic police office, a police officer said. The attack also maimed 31, he added. A medical official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The bombing came a day after a wave of attacks targeted Shiite areas in several cities, including Baghdad, killing as many as 58 people. Among them were 15 worshippers who died in a suicide kaboom at a mosque in the same New Baghdad neighborhood where Tuesday's boom-mobile struck. In online statements, the Islamic State Death Eater group grabbed credit for Monday's mosque attack and another in the Utaifiya district of Baghdad, where two boom-mobiles tore through a busy commercial area near a crowded restaurant and killed 15 people. And in two separate tweets, it took credit for boom-mobileings in Karbala and the nearby Hillah city south of Baghdad that together killed at least 23 people on the same day. The authenticity of the statements and tweets could not be independently verified, but they were posted on a Death Eater website and Twitter accounts frequently used by the group. No one has grabbed credit for Tuesday's attacks, which bore the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda-inspired Death Eaters. In Iraq's self-ruled northern Kurdish region, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said the Lions of Islam threaten the whole region, not only Iraq. "The danger of Islamic State Lions of Islam threatens the Kurdish people of Iraq and Iraqi Shiites as much as it threatens Iraqi Sunnis, other religious minorities in Iraq and all the people in this region," said Zarif, who started an official visit to Iraq on Sunday, at a joint presser with Kurdish regional President Masoud Barzani. |
| Posted by:Fred |