Baghdad hit by series of attacks

Suspected Sunni militants struck in and around Baghdad today, killing 17 people including 11 soldiers and policemen, and injuring about 40 in three separate attacks, including two suicide bombings, according to police and hospital officials.
The largest of today’s attacks was in the turbulent Youssifiyah district south of Baghdad where a suicide car bomber hit an army checkpoint, killing six soldiers and injuring 16, including 10 civilians and six soldiers.

Earlier in Baghdad’s upscale Mansour district, a car bomb near a cluster of shops killed six civilians and wounded 13.

Minutes later, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a nearby police station as officers were rushing out to the site of the first attack, killing five and injuring 10, all policemen.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but they all bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group, whose fighters control about a third of the country after they blitzed across much of the north and west of Iraq this year.

Elsewhere in Iraq, government forces backed with Shiite militiamen are continuing to meet tough resistance from Islamic State fighters in the refinery town of Beiji, a day after they pushed militants out of the town centre, a senior military official reached there by telephone said today.

It was said that reinforcements have reached Beiji, 250 kilometres north of Baghdad, to protect areas of the town under government control.