Dozens dead and wounded in Iraq violence

Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack at a Baghdad shopping mall that killed at least nine people.

The attack also underscored what many fear will happen as the Islamic State loses territory in places like Ramadi: that the group will return to its days as a guerrilla force trying to instill terror by carrying out attacks en masse.

The Isamic State rampage across Iraq in the summer of 2014 was halted several miles away from Baghdad, but the extremist group has claimed a number of attacks in the heavily guarded capital since then.

Iraq is one of the most risky countries in the world for journalists, especially those from the country, who are far more exposed to attacks than their foreign colleagues.

An anti-Qaeda “Awakening” group fighter scans an area outside a village on the southern outskirts of the Diyala provincial capital Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, on January 28, 2008. He blamed “undisciplined (Shi’ite) militias” for burning the mosques.

Iraqi state television said the rest of the hostages had been freed.

All six assailants were left dead by the end of the standoff, police said.

Reuters could not verify these accounts.

The attacks occurred in the central districts of Mualimeen, Asri and Orouba, the security sources said.

Four gunmen charged into a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad on Monday after a auto bomb exploded outside, killing at least seven people, two police sources said.

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

Meanwhile, a source from the interior ministry anonymously said that security sources regained control of the mall once they killed the two suicide bombers.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. At least 10 civilians were killed and another 22 injured, according to police. He called it “a desperate attempt by terrorist gangs after our forces’ victories in Ramadi and other areas”.

The Sunni Muslim jihadist group, which controls large swathes of northern and western Iraq, said it had targeted “rejectionist heathens” – its derogatory term for Shia.