Suicide bomb blast kills Iraqis at camp for displaced
Bomber dressed as a veiled woman detonates explosives at camp for internally displaced people in Iraq’s Anbar province.
At least 14 people, including civilians, have been killed after a suicide bomber disguised as a veiled woman blew himself up at a camp for internally displaced people in central Iraq, security sources said.
The attacker on Sunday approached a checkpoint at the camp in western Ramadi, in Iraq’s Anbar province before triggering the blast.
The AFP news agency quoted a doctor and a police officer as saying that most of the victims were women and children.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack at the “kilo 60” camp, which houses people forced out of Sunni Muslim areas controlled by the armed group in the Euphrates river valley.
READ MORE: As ISIL’s ‘caliphate’ crumbles, its ideology remains
Adnan Fayhan, the head of the local council in the al-Wafaa area, where the camp is located, said that the camp would be closed following the attack.
All the displaced people in the camp would be brought to another camp west of Ramadi that is “safer and receives more aid,” Fayhan said.
While Iraqi forces control the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, ISIL still holds areas in western Anbar, and the province still faces major security challenges.
ISIL overran large areas north and west of the capital, Baghdad, in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air raids and other support have since regained much of the territory they lost.
Further north, in Iraq’s second city of Mosul, US-backed Iraqi forces said on Sunday that they had completely surrounded ISIL fighters as they continued to make gains in a final push to retake the city from the armed group.
