Twin bombing attacks in Baghdad market kill at least 24

Two bombings claimed by the Islamic State group struck a Shiite area of northern Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 22 people, security and medical officials said.

In a statement circulated online, IS said that two suicide bombers had carried out the attack, killing and wounding “hundreds of polytheist rejectionists”, as the ultra-hardline Sunni group refers to Shiite Muslims.

Islamic State (IS) later claimed responsibility for the attacks in Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City district.

On Saturday, nearly 10 people lost their lives and almost three dozen others sustained injuries in a spate of bomb attacks in and around Baghdad.

According to police sources, the first explosion took place when a bomber detonated his vest inside the mosque in the Shia-populated Shulaa neighborhood of the Iraqi capital on Thursday evening.

Gunmen and suicide bombers riding on pickups stormed Abu Ghraib around the same time but were defeated by Iraqi security forces who quickly mobilized to defend the capital. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information. But the Iraqi security sources said the militants had been forced out of a police station and several army positions and had dug in at the cemetery and the silo, part of which was set on fire.

A spokesperson for Baghdad’s military control room on Sunday afternoon denied that there was a mass exodus of families from Abu Ghraib, warning people to avoid “rumours”. Iraqi authorities closed the prison in April 2014 due to the unstable security situation in the surrounding area. Security forces prevented ISIS from seizing Abu Ghraib when the extremists swept across northern and western Iraq in the summer of 2014.