The first blast was near a local government building and the
second one about 60 metres (65 yards) away at a bus station, police
sources said. The death toll was expected to keep rising.
Unverified online photographs showed a large plume of smoke rising
above the buildings as well as burnt out cars and bodies on the ground
at the site of one of the blasts, including several children. Police and
firefighters carried victims on stretchers and in their arms.
Islamic State said it had attacked a gathering of special
forces in Samawa, 230 km (140 miles) south of the capital, with one car
bomb and then blew up the second when security forces responded to the
site.
Islamic State holds positions mostly in Sunni areas of the
country's north and west, far from the mainly Shi'ite southern provinces
where Samawa is located. Such attacks are relatively rare.
The rise of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents has
exacerbated Iraq's sectarian conflict, mostly between Shi'ites and
Sunnis, which emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled
Saddam Hussein.
The quota-based governing system put in place by the United
States at the time is being challenged by hundreds of protesters who
camped out overnight in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone after
storming the parliament building.
(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Haider Kadhim; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Alison Williams)
- Reuters
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