Diyala Governorate

Three explosions, two of them suicide car bombs claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist group, killed at least 33 people in Iraq's restive Diyala province on August 10, police and medics said.

Iraqi officials said at least 42 people have been killed in two separate suicide bomb attacks, according to AP. The deadliest of the two happened at the marketplace of the capital of Diyala province, Baquba, located 60klm northwest of Baghdad. Police said a suicide car bomb tore through a marketplace, ending the lives of 35 people and wounding 72.

Bombs went off during a local football game in Iraq's restive Diyala province on July 27, killing at least four people, security officials said.

Kurdish fighters have reportedly expelled the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists from the Syrian border town of Kobane after more than four months of fighting, while Iraqi forces announced landmark gains in the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala.

ISIS-led insurgents are creating an Islamic state out of the vast strips of land they control in Iraq and Syria, the militants have announced.

Its territory will extend from Syria's Aleppo, once the economic heart of the country, to the Diyala province in the east of Iraq.

Iraq's Shiite rulers defied Western calls on June 17 to reach out to Sunnis to defuse the uprising in the north of the country, declaring a boycott of Iraq's main Sunni political bloc and accusing Sunni power Saudi Arabia of promoting 'genocide.'

Sunni Muslim militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacked a northern Iraqi village inhabited by Shiite ethnic Turkmens but were repelled, police said on June 17, highlighting an upsurge of sectarian violence after stunning advances by jihadi fighters.