Bus bombing claims lives in Baghdad

At least seven people have been killed in a bomb explosion inside a minibus in Baghdad’s Sadr City neighbourhood, according to Iraqi police and medical sources.

The blast on Thursday damaged a number of cars, wounding at least 10 people.

Baghdad’s predominantly Shia districts, of which Sadr City is one, are almost a daily target of bomb and suicide attacks.

Two bombings – one at a market and the second on a commercial street – killed 10 people in Baghdad on Wednesday.

A car bomb exploded at a commercial street in Sadr City, killing seven people and wounding 15 others, police officials said.

Earlier, police said a bomb blast near an outdoor market in southern Baghdad killed three people and wounded seven others.

Many of the attacks on mainly Shia areas of Iraq are believed to be the handiwork of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who consider the Shia to be heretics deserving of death.

ISIL’s capture of territory in June plunged Iraq into its worst security crisis since the 2003 US invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.