At least 38 people were killed in two car bombings in Shia-dominated parts of western Baghdad on Saturday night. A third blast caused by a suicide bomber killed another 12 people and injured 40 others.
Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said the explosions happened within minutes of each other and could be linked to events in western Iraq.
"What we normally see is when car bombs go off it is normally as a result of an action that's taking place in Anbar province usually against ISIL fighters." he said.
The area has been the scene of clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters, who have taken control of large sections of northern and western Iraq this year.
In other violence, four Iraqi soldiers died in a friendly-fire incident in the town of Udaim, 90km northeast of Baghdad.
The soldiers, who had been wounded by ISIL fighters, were being taken to hospital when Shia volunteer fighters mistook them for ISIL fighters and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at their vehicle, police and medical officials said.
Saturday's violence came amid warnings that the ISIL was close to taking over the whole of western Anbar province.
US defence officials said Iraqi government forces were in a "tenuous" position in Anbar, where the few remaining government-controlled areas have come under repeated attack from ISIL.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from the northern Iraqi town of Erbil, said local government officials were appealing for help.
"They believe that it is just a matter of days, up to 10 days, and ISIL can control the whole of Anbar," she said.
"Anbar is the biggest province in Iraq and it also borders Syria, which means that ISIL an open supply line between its strongholds in Iraq as well as in Syria. It is also within the doorsteps of Baghdad."
Parts of Anbar province fell to ISIL at the start of the year and most of the rest was seized by the group in a lightning sweep through Iraq's Sunni Arab heartland in June.
[aljazeera.com]
12/10/14
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Islamic State suicide bombers kill 28 Kurds; police chief assassinated...
ReplyDelete(Reuters) - Suspected Islamic State bombers assassinated an Iraqi provincial police chief and killed 28 people in an attack on a Kurdish security headquarters on Sunday, a second straight day of mass attacks that killed scores.
The two attacks, in the north of the country and the west, showed the jihadist group's ability to inflict damage on both the forces of the autonomous Kurdish region and the central government, despite U.S.-led air strikes.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of a Kurdish security compound in the north, saying it had sent three foreign bombers: a German, a Saudi and a Turk, according to SITE, a group that monitors jihadi announcements.
Hospital sources said Kurdish "Peshmerga" security forces and civilians were among the 28 killed in the attack in Qara Tappa, a mainly Kurdish town in the north of Diyala province, an ethnically and religiously mixed battleground area.
As many as 90 people were wounded in the attack, which hit an administrative compound of Kurds that control the area................http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/12/us-mideast-crisis-iraq-bombings-idUSKCN0I109U20141012?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
12/10/14