Suicide bomber kills five in Baghdad shrine neighbourhood

Muslim worshippers praying at a shrine in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, where a suicide car bomber killed five people on Sunday (July 12). PHOTO: AFP

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A suicide car bomber killed five people on Sunday in Baghdad's northern neighbourhood of Kadhimiya, home to one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines, police and medical sources said.

They said the man detonated the explosives in a busy square shortly before dusk and the end of the daily Ramadan fast.

Dozens of vehicles nearby caught fire and 21 people were injured, the sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State militants who control much of northern Iraq and the province of Anbar west of Baghdad, regularly send bombers into the capital.

A second bomb in the Iskan district of western Baghdad killed two people on Sunday evening, medical sources said.

Fighters from the mainly Shi'ite Hashid Shaabi militia, together with Iraqi security forces, are preparing a counter-attack in Anbar against Islamic State after the militants seized the provincial capital Ramadi in mid-May.

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