6 killed in car bomb in eastern Baghdad

At least six people were killed and 15 wounded yesterday when a bomb in a car parked near a mosque in Baghdad’s eastern outskirts exploded, police and medics said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the predominately Shia Muslim neighbourhood of Al-Obaidi but Daesh regularly targets civilian areas in the heavily fortified capital.

Attacks across Baghdad in the past week, some claimed by the ultra-hardline Sunni group, have killed more than 60 people, with violence escalating as US-backed Iraqi forces try to drive the militants from the northern city of Mosul.

Daesh has lost most of the territory it seized in northern and western Iraq in 2014, and ceding Mosul would probably spell the end of its self-styled caliphate. However, its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and plotting or inspiring attacks on the West are likely to persist.