At least 30 killed in ISIL bombing at village football match near Baghdad

50 others were wounded in the blast that struck the village of Al Asriya.

HILLA // At least 30 people were killed and more than 50 wounded on Friday when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd after a local football match in a village south of Baghdad.

“They were just handing the trophy to the winners, the suicide attacker blew himself up in the crowd,” said a police captain from the village, Al Asriya.

ISIL group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on social media and posted a picture of the purported bomber.

Al Asriya is near Iskandariyah, a town about 40 kilometres south of the capital.

A source at Iskandariyah hospital warned that the death toll was preliminary and could rise.

The medic said the attack took place around 7pm local time.

Iskandariyah is part of a mixed Sunni-Shiite area south of Baghdad which was once dubbed “the triangle of death”. It was badly affected by sectarian violence last decade.

Pushing back ISIL in this region after the extremists took over large parts of the country in 2014 was one of the priorities of the government and allied Shiite militias.

That goal was achieved in a few months and ISIL has been largely eradicated from the area. However, violence – of both a sectarian nature and crime-driven – has remained frequent.

Further south, at least 47 people were killed when a lorry bomb exploded at a checkpoint at the entrance of the city of Hilla on March 6.

That attack was the deadliest car bomb explosion in Iraq this year.

* Agence France-Presse