A double suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State has killed 70 people in a Shia district of Baghdad in the deadliest attack inside the Iraqi capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.
Police sources said the suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.
A Reuters witness saw pools of blood on the ground with slippers, shoes and mobile phones at the site of the blasts, which was sealed off to prevent further attacks.
In a statement circulated online, Isis claimed responsibility for the blasts. “Our swords will not cease to cut off the heads of the rejectionist polytheists, wherever they are,” it said, using derogatory terms for Shias.
Iraqi forces, backed by airstrikes from a US-led coalition, have driven Isis back in the western Anbar province recently, and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul.
But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control, often targeting members of Iraq’s Shia majority, most recently on Thursday when two Isis suicide bombers killed 15 people at a mosque in the capital.
Prime minister Haider al-Abadi said the attacks were in response to Isis’s recent defeats. “This gang targeted civilians after it lost the initiative and its dregs fled the battlefield before our proud fighters,” he said on his official Facebook page.
At dawn on Sunday, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, seizing positions in a grain silo and a cemetery and killing at least 17 members of the security forces, officials said.
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