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IS claims car bombing in southern Iraq

Xinhua, October 6, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Islamic State (IS) militant group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for a bomb attack at a marketplace in Iraq's southern province of Basra that killed 11 people.

In an online statement, the extremist group said its members detonated a car bomb on Monday at a Shiite area in the Sunni town of Zubair, west of the oil-hub city of Basra, some 550 km south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.

About 30 others were also wounded in the car bombing, a provincial police source told Xinhua late on Monday.

At least 11 shops and some civilian cars were destroyed or set ablaze as a result of the bombing, said the source.

The latest bombing ended the relative calm in the province of Basra, which has not witnessed any major terrorist attacks in the past few months, and previously massive bombings were rare in the province.

Iraq has been witnessing some of the worst violence in years. At least 12,282 civilians were killed and 23,126 others injured in 2014, making it the deadliest year since the flareup of sectarian violence in 2006-2007, according to a recent United Nations report.

Many blame the current chronic instability, cycle of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups such as the IS group on the United States, which invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the pretext of seeking to destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the country. The war led to the ouster and eventual execution of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, but no WMD was found. Endit