Iraq: More than 60 people killed in wave of car bomb attacks

BAGHDAD, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- At least 63 people were killed Monday in a wave of car bomb attacks across central, southern and eastern Iraq, according to medical sources and police.

The BBC reports 40 people were killed when a vehicle exploded in a market in Khalis, a mainly Shia Arab village in Iraq's eastern Diyala province.

Another 10 people were killed in a similar attack in the town of al-Zubair, 9 miles southwest of Basra, while a blast in Baghdad's northeastern neighborhood of Husseiniya killed 13 people and injured 25 others.

The attacks appeared to have been directed at Iraq's Shia Arab population, some in places normally considered difficult for Sunni militants to operate freely.

The Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group occupying portions of western and northern Iraq, said it was responsible for the attack in Basra, but the other bombings have gone unclaimed.

While Baghdad is regularly targeted by suicide bombers, the Iraqi government declared Diyala province secure in January, and Basra, a heavily Shia oil town in the far south, is not normally subjected to the same violence seen in northern and western Iraq.

IS has in the past characterized Shia Muslims as heretics, and has claimed responsibility for previous attacks on Shia communities, including a string of bombings in Baghdad's Adhamiyah and Kadhimiya districts that killed at least 28 people in July.

On Saturday, suicide car bombings in the Kadhimiya district are reported to have killed 18 people.

Monday's attacks come one week after at least 60 civilians, security personnel and IS militants were killed in a day of suicide bombings, airstrikes and ground battles in portions of western, central and northern Iraq.

IS forces are meanwhile reported to have on Sunday executed at least 70 members of the Sunni Arab Al Bu Nimr tribe, an anti-IS clan allied with the Shia-led Baghdad government.

Last month, a total of 717 Iraqis were killed and another 1,216 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict, according to a U.N. report.