18 dead after gunmen attack Baghdad shopping centre

No one immediately claimed responsibility for either attack, but the Islamic State group often targets the country’s Shiite majority with bombs in crowded marketplaces that are created to kill large numbers of civilians.

According to Iraqi officials, at least 50 others were wounded in the attack that lasted over an hour.

Gunmen on Monday attacked a shopping mall in Baghdad, detonating suicide vests inside the complex and exploding a auto bomb nearby, killing at least 18 people and wounding 40 others, according to medical and police sources.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attacks in Muqdadiya and the Baghdad suburb. “The situation is under control”. More than 22,000 Iraqi civilians, including police, were killed across the country in 2015, the United Nations office said.

The double bombing at the Muqdadiya cafe killed at least 20 people, a lot of them Shia militiamen from the paramilitary Popular Mobilisation forces which are battling IS in western and northern Iraq.

A crater is clearly visible at the entrance to the Jawhara Mall in New Baghdad, where a bomb was detonated on Monday.

An attack claimed by the Islamic State group and involving suicide explosions, gunfights and hostage-taking wreaked chaos in the eastern neighborhood of Baghdad al-Jadida. Police officials say the cafe was frequented by militia fighters under the government-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces and many fighters are among the dead.

The gunmen were still holed up in the shopping centre in Baghdad al-Jadida, a police colonel said, adding that it was feared the attackers were wearing suicide belts.

The sequence of the attack, a departure from Islamic State’s usual modus operandi in Baghdad, remained unclear and the statement posted by the jihadists online provided few details.

A medical source has said that 12 bodies had been taken to the hospital while there are around 35 people injured.

The rise of Islamic State, an ultra hardline Sunni Muslim group, has exacerbated a long-running sectarian conflict in Iraq, mostly between Shi’ites and Sunnis.