At least 35 people have been killed in a suicide car bomb attack in a busy square in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, security and medical sources say.
Sixty-one other people were injured by the blast in the predominantly Shia Muslim eastern district of Sadr City. Another car bomb later exploded in the car park of the nearby Al-Kindi hospital, killing three people.
The jihadist group Islamic State said it carried out both attacks, targeting a “gathering of Shia” in the first.
On Saturday, IS said it was behind two suicide bombings at a market in Baghdad that left 28 people dead. Again, the reported targets were Shia, whom it regards as apostates.
Monday’s first attack targeted a square in Sadr city where day labourers typically wait to pick up work. Asaad Hashim, an owner of a mobile phone shop who suffered shrapnel wounds to his right hand, told the Associated Press that the bomber had pretended to be a man seeking to hire labourers. The labourers crowded round the vehicle, trying to get hired. “Then a big boom came, sending them up into the air,” Mr Hashim said.
Nine of the victims were women in a minibus that was passing through the square at the time, according to the Reuters news agency.