Iraq carnage: Over 100 killed, mostly Iranians

Security forces inspect on Thursday a petrol station in Hilla, south of Baghdad, the site of a suicide truck bomb attack. (Reuters)

BAGHDAD: A suicide truck bomb killed over 100 people, most of them Iranian Shiites, at a petrol station in the city of Hilla, on Thursday, police and medical sources said. The attack took place near a village called Shomali, about 120 km southeast of Baghdad.
Daesh, the ultra hard-line militant group that considers all Shiites apostates, claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement.
The group is also fighting off a US-backed offensive on its stronghold Mosul, in northern Iraq, in which Iranian-trained Shiite militias are taking part.
The victims were en route back to Iran from the Iraqi city of Karbala, where they had observed a Shiite ritual, the medical sources said.
The gas station has a restaurant in its premises that is popular with travelers. Five buses were torched by the force of the blast from the explosives-laden truck, a police official said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry condemned the attack without giving a casualties toll.
Tehran will continue to support Iraq’s “relentless fight against terrorism,” ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.
Falah Al-Radhi, head of the provincial security committee for Babylon, the province where the bombing happened, said several buses were targeted.
Videos circulating on social media showed debris scattered over a large area along the main highway linking Baghdad to the main southern port city of Basra.
“There are completely charred corpses at the scene,” said Radhi, who added that at least 20 wounded were transferred to nearby hospitals.
The Joint Operations Command in Baghdad issued a statement saying the truck was packed with 500 liters of ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound used in many explosive devices.
Iraq had deployed around 25,000 members of the security forces in and around the shrine city, which lies southwest of Baghdad, to protect the visitors from a feared Daesh attack.The White House condemned the attack, saying the bombing “was clearly intended to stoke sectarian tensions.”