Car bomb blast kills at least 23 in south Baghdad

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a car bomb that police and medical sources said killed at least 23 people and wounded more than 45 in a mainly Shi’ite southern district on Monday (March 20).

The group said in an online statement that a parked car bomb exploded in Amil district. Debris from the blast on the busy commercial street was being cleared early on Tuesday (March 21).

Islamic State has recently intensified its campaign of violence in the capital while a 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi forces extends its advances against the group in Mosul.

Mosul is Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country. The group has lost most of the territory it seized in northern and western Iraq in 2014, and ceding Mosul would probably spell the end of its self-styled caliphate.