WEB DESK /
At least 17 people including women and children were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in Khalis, about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad.
According to the police, most of the victims died inside their vehicles when a suicide car bomber attacked a mini bus packed with women and children at a checkpoint while waiting to enter Khalis.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State militants have stepped up attacks even as they incur battlefield setbacks in northern and western Iraq. The blast comes a day after so-called Islamic State said it was behind a suicide bomb attack on a security checkpoint in Baghdad.
Hospital sources said the death toll was expected to rise given the extent of critical injuries. The ultra-hardline militants have lost much of the territory they seized in 2014 and the Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged to retake this year the northern city of Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq.