ISIL kills 32 people in Baghdad attack

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack that killed at least 32 people on Jan. 2 in Baghdad.

The jihadist organization took responsibility for the blast in Sadr City via its propaganda agency Amaq, claiming the "martyrdom operation" had killed around 40 people.

Iraqi police sources told AFP that at least 32 people were killed and more than 60 wounded when an explosives-laden vehicle went off on a square in the Sadr City. 

Many of the victims were daily laborers waiting for jobs at an intersection in Sadr City, a sprawling majority Shiite neighborhood in the northeast of the capital that has been repeatedly targeted.

At least 27 people were killed by twin explosions in a busy market area in central Baghdad on Dec. 31, 2016, in what was the deadliest such attack in the Iraqi capital in two months. ISIL also claimed that attack. 

The caliphate ISIL proclaimed in 2014 is shrinking steadily and jihadist fighters are defending Mosul, their last major urban stronghold in Iraq against U.S.-led coalition-backed Iraqi forces.

French President Françoise Hollande, who visited Iraq on Jan. 2, in order to visit French soldiers training Iraqi forces and also meetings, said Western support for military action against ISIL was key to preventing attacks at home. 

France, one of the most active members of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Sunni extremist group, is particularly concerned over the return of a large contingent of French jihadists from Syria and Iraq.

"Taking action against terrorism here in Iraq is also preventing acts of terrorism on our own soil," Hollande said at a base where French soldiers have been training elite Iraqi forces.
...