SHAFAQNA– Two people were killed and 25 injured on Friday morning in an explosion in the Iraqi town of al-Qaim near the border with Syria to which displaced families are being encouraged to return.
“The final casualties from the car bomb explosion at a marketplace in al-Qaim town is two civilians killed and 20 others wounded, along with five policemen,” Nadhim al-Dulaimi, head of al-Qaim town council, told Xinhua.
“Fifteen of the wounded have left the town’s hospital after they received treatment from different wounds they sustained by the blast,” al-Dulaimi said.
Moreover, the huge blast badly damaged some 20 shops, two nearby buildings and seven civilian cars, he said.
Sayf al-Badr, spokesman of the Iraqi Health Ministry, confirmed to local Iraqi media that the toll of the car bombing in al-Qaim was two killed and 25 wounded.
Earlier, a local police source put the toll of the blast at one civilian killed and seven others wounded, citing initial reports.
The incident took place in the morning when a booby-trapped car ripped through a popular market in al-Qaim, some 400 km west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity, xinhuanet reported.
Al-Qaim, a city along the border with Syria in Iraq’s western Anbar province, was one of the last cities liberated from ISIS in 2017.
The Iraqi army is closing camps for people displaced by war in Anbar and pressuring families to return to their communities before basic services have been restored, according to a recent Associated Press report.
Nearly 40,000 Iraqis have returned to their communities in Al-Qaim and the surrounding district, according to data from the U.N, apnews reported.