Blasts kill at least 17 in Baghdad

Three blasts killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 50 in predominantly Shia districts of Baghdad today, police and medical sources said.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest in a commercial street in the eastern Baghdad Al-Jadida area of the Iraqi capital, killing nine people and wounding more than 30, they said.

Another suicide attack hit a commercial street of Bayaa in western Baghdad, killing six and wounding 22, the sources said.

A roadside bomb exploded near a gathering of cattle herders and merchants in Al-Radhwaniya, also in western Baghdad, killing two people, they said.

Daesh claimed the two suicide attacks, but did not mention the third assault.

The group has intensified bomb attacks in government-held areas this year as it loses territory to US-backed Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Shia militias.

The group claimed a truck bombing in July that killed at least 324 people in the Karrada shopping area of Baghdad – the deadliest single attack in Iraq since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The group continues to control vast areas in northern and western Iraq, including the city of Mosul, captured in 2014.