International Shia News Agency

Nytimes: Four Bombings Kill Over 50 People Around Baghdad

SHAFAQNA (International Shia News Association) – BAGHDAD — A rash of bombings in several districts around greater Baghdad on Saturday killed more than 50 people and wounded nearly 100, unnerving the capital on what, for many, was the final day of a weeklong holiday.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a crowded market in Mishahda, in the rural northern outskirts of the capital, killing 14 people and wounding 27, said police officials and an employee at a hospital, all of whom requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Three more bombings occurred in quick succession around nightfall. A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives detonated his payload at a police checkpoint in Khadamiya, a predominantly Shiite middle-class neighborhood in northern Baghdad, killing 12 people, including four police officers, and wounding 20, officials said.

Around the same time, a car packed with explosives exploded next to a marketplace in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Shula in northwestern Baghdad, killing eight and wounding 24, officials said.

After the Shula bombing, authorities blocked off the road leading to the scene, causing traffic to back up, and cars were rerouted. The final attack occurred when a suicide car bomber drove his vehicle into the traffic congestion and set off his explosives, killing 17 people and wounding 28, officials said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the predominantly Sunni jihadist insurgency called Islamic State, which has taken control of vast regions of the country, often uses suicide bombers and car bombs, usually targeting majority-Shiite neighborhoods. Saturday was the end of a holiday week that began with the celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Islamic Feast of Sacrifice.

Elsewhere in Iraq, fighters for Islamic State, also known as ISIS, killed four brothers, including an Iraqi cameraman for a local television station in Salahuddin Province, which is predominantly Sunni, officials and local tribal leaders said Saturday. The journalist, Raad al-Azzawi, and his brothers were shot in the head on Friday in a village near Tikrit while their mother was forced to watch, the officials said.

Mr. Azzawi was kidnapped on Sept. 7 by the insurgents, who said they planned to decapitate him because he refused to work for them, according to Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog group based in Paris.

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