[TVNZ.CO.NZ] A jacket wallah set off his explosives-laden belt today in a mosque in busy commercial area in central Storied Baghdad, killing at least 17 people, Iraqi officials said, as the country remains without a new government following last month's national elections.The bomber entered the Shiite mosque in the Shorja market in downtown Storied Baghdad as worshippers were heading inside to attend noon prayers, a police officer said. The kaboom maimed 29 other people, he added.
Inside the mosque, furniture lay overturned, walls were pockmarked with shrapnel and the ground was littered with shattered glass. Outside the mosque, blast barriers were stained with blood.
Also in Storied Baghdad, a bomb went off in an outdoor vegetable market in the eastern Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City, killing two civilians and wounding five others, police said. And two coppers were killed and six other people maimed when a bomb hit a police patrol in the southern Dora district, another police officer said.
Three medical official confirmed causality figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release information.
No group immediately grabbed credit for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original...
. The group frequently targets Shiites, who it considers heretics, and carries out coordinated bombings in an attempt to incite sectarian strife.