Twin ISIL bombings near Baghdad market kill at least 22

ISIL claimed the attacks in a statement posted online that said two suicide bombers had detonated explosive belts in Sadr City.

Baghdad // Two suicide bombings claimed by ISIL struck a Shiite area of northern Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 22 people – the deadliest attacks to hit the Iraqi capital this year.

The blasts occurred near a market in the Sadr City area also wounded at least 59 people, security and medical officials said.

ISIL, which overran larges areas of territory north and west of Baghdad in 2014, claimed the attacks in a statement posted online that said two suicide bombers had detonated explosive belts in Sadr City.

ISIL considers Shiite Muslims, who make up the majority of Iraq’s population, to be heretics and frequently targets them with bombings and other attacks.

Suicide bombings are a tactic almost exclusively used in Iraq by ISIL.

The extremist group claimed twin suicide bombings targeting Shiite worshippers on Thursday that killed at least nine people.

Those bombings took place in Shuala, another Shiite-majority area in northern Baghdad.

While attacks are still common in Baghdad, violence in the city has decreased significantly since ISIL launched a sweeping offensive in June 2014, after which many of its militants became occupied with fighting elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Iraqi security forces repelled an attack by ISIL militants on the capital’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib on Sunday.

Three suicide car bombers struck a security force barracks as gunmen opened fire, according to two police officers who spoke on condition of anonymity. At least eight government and paramilitary forces were killed and 22 wounded, they said. The clashes left a silo on fire.

The commander of military operations in western Baghdad, Maj Gen Saad Harbiya, said the situation is “under control” and a local curfew has been imposed.

Abu Ghraib, about 29 kilometres from downtown Baghdad, is the location of a prison of the same name where US troops committed notorious abuses against Iraqi detainees following the 2003 invasion.

It is halfway between Baghdad and Fallujah, which is controlled by the ISIL group.

Security forces prevented ISIL from seizing Abu Ghraib when the extremists swept across northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014.

* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press