{ISIL claims responsibility for suicide car bombing that kills day labourers in Sadr City, a mainly Shia suburb.}<\/p>\n
A suicide car bombing has killed at least 39 Iraqis in a busy market in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the interior ministry said.<\/p>\n
The attack in the mainly Shia suburb on Monday was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.<\/p>\n
The bomber lured poor labourers close to the bomb site, promising them work, before blowing himself up.<\/p>\n
Bodies were scattered across the bloody pavement alongside fruit, vegetables and the labourers’ shovels and axes.<\/p>\n
An official from the interior ministry said another 62 people were injured.<\/p>\n
Asaad Hashim, an owner of a mobile phone store nearby, told the AP news agency that the labourers had been jostling around the bomber’s vehicle trying to get work for the day.<\/p>\n
“Then a big boom came, sending them up into the air,” said the 28-year old, who suffered shrapnel wounds to his right hand. He blamed “the most ineffective security forces in the world” for failing to prevent the attack.<\/p>\n
An angry crowd cursed the government, even after a representative of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tried to calm them.<\/p>\n
Late last month, Iraqi authorities started removing some of the security checkpoints in Baghdad in a bid to ease traffic for the capital’s six million residents.<\/p>\n
ISIL has carried out frequent bomb attacks on Shia areas in Baghdad, often targeting markets, restaurants and other crowded areas to maximise casualties. <\/p>\n
Several smaller bombings elsewhere in the city on Monday killed another 20 civilians and wounded at least 70, medics and police officials said.<\/p>\n
Gunmen wearing suicide vests also attacked two police stations in the central Iraqi city of Samarra on Monday, killing at least seven policemen, security sources said.<\/p>\n
The attacks overshadowed a visit by French President Francois Hollande who has offered to step up support for the country’s campaign against ISIL. <\/p>\n
Speaking after a meeting Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, Hollande said that he thought Iraqi forces would recapture the northern city of Mosul from ISIL within weeks. <\/p>\n
US-backed Iraqi forces are currently fighting to push ISIL fighters from Mosul, the armed group’s last major stronghold in the country, but are facing fierce resistance.<\/p>\n
Since the offensive began on October 17, Iraqi forces have retaken a quarter of the city in the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n
As clashes continued in and around Mosul on Monday , ISIL also targeted on Monday military positions away from the main battlefield.<\/p>\n
Fighters attacked an army barracks near Baiji, 180km north of Baghdad, killing four soldiers and wounding 12 people, including Sunni tribal fighters, army and police sources said.<\/p>\n
They seized weapons there and launched mortars at nearby Shirqat, forcing security forces to impose a curfew and close schools and offices in the town, according to local officials and security sources.<\/p>\n
In a separate incident, gunmen broke into a village near Udhaim, 90km north of Baghdad, where they killed nine Sunni tribal fighters with shots to the head, police and medical sources said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{ISIL claims responsibility for suicide car bombing that kills day labourers in Sadr City, a mainly Shia suburb.} A suicide car bombing has killed at least 39 Iraqis in a busy market in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the interior ministry said. The attack in the mainly Shia suburb on Monday was claimed by the Islamic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31550"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31550"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}