IS conflict: Car bombing at Baghdad market kills dozens

 

car bomb at a crowded Baghdad market has killed at least 64 people, officials say, in one of the worst recent attacks in the Iraqi capital.

At least 87 others were wounded in the blast in the Shia Muslim district of Sadr City during the morning rush hour.

So-called Islamic State (IS) said it had carried out the attack.
The Sunni Muslim group, which controls swathes of northern and western Iraq, has frequently targeted Shia, whom it considers heretics.
Many of the victims included women and children, Iraqi police and medical sources said. Several of the injured were said to be in critical condition.
Pictures showed vehicles and the facades of several buildings heavily damaged.
In an online statement, IS said it had targeted Shia militiamen.

An eyewitness told the Associated Press news agency that the bomb was in a pickup truck loaded with fruit and vegetables.
Its driver parked the vehicle and quickly disappeared among the crowd, he said.
"It was such a thunderous explosion that jolted the ground," Karim Salih, 45, told the news agency.
"The force of the explosion threw me for metres and I lost consciousness for a few minutes."
In the aftermath of the bombing, angry survivors blamed the politicians for failing to protect them and ensure security, reports the BBC's Jim Muir in northern Iraq.
The bombing comes in the midst of an acute political crisis in Baghdad, with parliament unable to meet and the government effectively paralysed by factional disputes, he notes.
IS has frequently targeted commercial areas and government and security personnel, causing heavy casualties.
Iraqi forces, backed by US-led coalition air strikes and Shia-dominated paramilitary forces, have regained some territory seized by IS in 2014, but have been unable to prevent bomb attacks in the capital.