Iraqi army probe shows IS behind blast in Anbar province

The Iraqi army on Thursday said a military probe indicated that a massive explosion earlier in the month at a headquarters of an army unit was by explosives planted by the Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq's western province on Anbar.

A statement by the Defense Ministry confirmed that the explosion in Albu Diyab area in the provincial capital city of Ramadi, some 110 km west of Baghdad, "was carried out by high explosives and a very large quantities from under the building, and a tunnel discovered later at the edge of the destroyed building goes toward the enemy (positions of IS group)."

"It was clear that the blast was in the middle of the house and completely removed the building, in addition to destroying some nearby houses, leaving a crater of up to seven-meter depth and 20-meter wide," the statement said.

The massive bombing, which took place at 8:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) on March 11, occurred when a group of soldiers and officers just returned from their vacation, making the whole members of the unit at the headquarters at the time of the blast which killed them all, the statement said without giving the exact number of the casualty.

It also said that 13 bodies of the army were found some 20 to 150 meters away from the center of the huge blast.

Earlier, some Iraqi politicians accused the U.S.-led coalition aircraft of mistakenly bombing the headquarters, but the U.S. military denied that they had any airstrike at the time on Ramdi.

Two days after the massive bombing, Sabah Karhout, head of Anbar's provincial council, told reporters that 40 soldiers were killed when a tunnel of some 1,500 meters was dug under the army headquarters by the IS militants and blew it up under their building.

Karhout's comments pushed the Iraqi security forces later to launch a probe into the incident which angered the Iraqis, including some politicians who accused the U.S.-led coalition of killing the Iraqi soldiers recklessly.

The IS group has seized parts of Iraq's largest province Anbar and tried to advance toward Baghdad, but several counter attacks by security forces and Shiite militias have pushed them back.

The security situation in Iraq has drastically deteriorated since June 10 last year, when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and the IS.

The IS has taken control of the country's northern province of Nineveh, and then seized swathes of territories after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in other predominantly Sunni provinces.

The U.S. built an international coalition, including countries in and outside the Middle East, to push back IS expansion, carrying out airstrikes against the armed Islamist group in both Iraq and Syria. Endit