Scores killed in Iraq market blast on first day of Eid

Rescuers in the Iraqi town of Khan Bani Saad said they were searching collapsed buildings for bodies Saturday after a huge auto bomb ripped through a busy market, killing at least 90 people.

An Iraqi woman reacts as she stands amid the debris in the aftermath of a massive suicide vehicle bomb attack carried out by the Islamic State group in the predominantly Shia town of Khan Bani Saad, 20 km north of Baghdad, on July 18, 2015.

“The explosion was big, it caused a lot of damage”, said Raad Fares al-Mas, a member of parliament from Diyala province capital Baquba, according to Agence France Presse.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war using an activist network on the ground, said it had also documented the use of poison gas by Islamic State in an attack on a village near Tel Brak on June 28th.

The group said it was targeting Shias celebrating the end of Ramadan.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on its associated Twitter accounts.

It was the most deadly bombing in the area since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, said Khudhur al-Ubaidi, secretary of the Diyala provincial council, adding that the death toll was expected to rise because “most of the injured are in critical condition, and more bodies are still under the rubble”.

Islamic State militants have largely been pushed out of the eastern province of Diyala since seizing territory during their rapid advances a year ago, but pockets of fighting remain.

The Islamic State, composed of Sunni Muslims, has tried to spark sectarian warfare with Shiite Muslims, who dominate Iraq.

Last Monday, Iraq’s government announced an offensive to take the city back.

But initial signs indicate no quick victory is in the offing for Iraqi security forces and that Sunni-Shiite rivalries are once again potentially jeopardizing the campaign, senior USA and coalition officers said Saturday.

“I believe over time the Iraqi security forces will reassert themselves”, said Dempsey, predicting that success on the battlefield will make them “the viable force of the future”. Twelve YPG personnel were hospitalized.

In the Iraq attack, IS forces fired a projectile containing a liquid chemical agent at a peshmerga checkpoint near the Mosul Dam, triggering symptoms among the Iraqi forces that included headaches, nausea and light burns to the skin.

“Progress has been steady but hard”, said Brigadier James Learmont, a British senior officer detailed to the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as deputy commander.

The type of chemical used had not been definitively determined, he said.