Multiple bomb attacks in and around Baghdad leave 47 dead

Bombings and a mortar strike in Shi’ite Muslim parts of Baghdad and in the rural belt south of the capital killed at least 47 people on Thursday and wounded 123, police and medical officials said. An Iraqi Shi’ite political figure said the assaults, part of a surge of violence in Shi’ite neighbourhoods in recent weeks, were revenge attacks by the Sunni Muslim militant group Islamic State, which has seized control of much of northern Iraq. The al Qaeda offshoot has been battling Shi’ite militias and soldiers loyal to Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government as it attempts to establish a caliphate straddling Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it has also captured swathes of territory.

They [Islamic State] are making a statement to the Shi’ites fighting them … We can target you in your household.

Kareem al-Noori, Badr Organisation, Shi’ite political party with militia wing

The violence also reached the countryside south of Baghdad, a mixed area that is often a battlefront in the war between Sunni jihadists and the Shi’ite-led government. In the district of Mahmudiyah, a car bomb killed six and wounded 18, while a bomb blast claimed the lives of three Iraqi soldiers and wounded one other on patrol in Madain.

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