Roadside bombs kill 4 women and child fleeing IS-held town in Iraq

Roadside bombs killed four women and a female child fleeing a besieged town in Iraq's northern province of Kirkuk Sunday, a security source said.

The female civilians were headed to the neighboring northern central province of Salahudin, according to the same source.

The first blast killed three women in the mountainous area of Himreen along the border between the two provinces, when the bomb planted by Islamic State (IS) militants detonated near them, a source from Salahudin Operations Command told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

In a separate incident, another woman and her female child were killed in a roadside blast in the same mountainous area, the source added.

Iraq has witnessed increased violence since the IS group took control of parts of its northern and western regions, including Mosul, in June 2014, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts killed 691 Iraqis and wounded 1,016 others in August throughout Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said earlier.

Many blame the current chronic instability, cycles of violence, and the emergence of extremist groups, such as the IS, on the United States due to its invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003. Endit