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Daesh attack on police station kills 5 in Iraq capital

An Iraqi youth salvages items from a damaged building following a car bomb attack in Sadr City, a Shia area north of the capital Baghdad, on May 11, 2016. (AFP photo)

The Daesh Takfiri group has carried out a deadly attack on security forces in Baghdad, a day after triple bombings claimed by the group in the capital left more than 90 dead.

Security officials said Thursday that five people were killed, including a police colonel, in the attack which took place on the police station west of Baghdad.

Later reports said all the dead were police officers. The attack, which targeted Al-Zaidan police station in Abu Ghraib neighborhood, left 14 injured.

Daesh, a terror group which still controls areas in west and north of Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement

The bomb attack came as residents of Baghdad were preparing funerals for the victims of Wednesday's triple bombings, the deadliest of which at a market in the Shia-dominated Sadr City area of north Baghdad left 64 dead.

Daesh regularly targets Iraqi Shias in its attacks as a ploy to fuel sectarian divides in the war-torn country. This comes as volunteers from both Shia and Sunni communities have been assisting the Iraqi military in its battle against Daesh since it seized swaths of land in 2014.

17 Iraqi troops slain near Ramadi

In a separate bomb attack on Thursday, at least 17 Iraqi soldiers were killed near Ramadi, the capital of western province of Anbar.

Military officials said Daesh militants detonated a truck loaded with explosives in Jarayshi area, 10 km (6 miles) north of Ramadi, while they also surrounded an army regiment, seized a bridge and cut off a key supply route linking Ramadi to the Thirthar district further north.

The attack came as Iraqi forces are preparing a major offensive into Fallujah, a town in Anbar which has been under the control of Daesh for the last six months.

Iraq has managed to regain significant ground from Daesh in recent months, but the group still controls some key areas in the two provinces of Nineveh and Anbar, in north and west. That enables the terrorist group to carry out frequent bombings in government-held areas.

Loose security is often blamed for the surge in attacks in Baghdad. Thousands of security personnel have been deployed across the city but searches are either hasty or nonexistent while fake bomb detectors are extensively used.


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