BAGHDAD // A series of explosions in Baghdad killed at least five people and wounded nearly 20 on Sunday, including a bombing claimed by the ISIL militant group near Baghdad International Airport.

The first blast took place near a police patrol in the suburb of Radwaniya, a largely Sunni neighborhood south-west of Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding five. Police also reported a roadside bombing on a commercial street in the Hay Jami’a neighborhood that killed three people and wounded nine.

Near Baghdad International Airport, the ISIL claimed responsibility for a car bomb at one of the first airport checkpoints, wounding five people and causing extensive damage to cars in the parking lot. In a statement posted on a militant website, the group identified the attacker as a man named Abu Muawiya Al Falluji, saying he was targeting Americans leaving the airport. The statement could not immediately be verified but it was posted on a website frequently used by the group. The blast hit a United Nations convoy of three vehicles that was passing at the time of the explosion, but no one in the convoy was wounded, the UN said on Sunday.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualties.

Baghdad has remained relatively calm amid a rampage in northern and western Iraq by the Al Qaida-inspired Sunni militant group. Recent bombings have frequently targeted Shiite-majority areas in the capital, but the violence has been considerably subdued from the darkest days of sectarian bloodletting in 2006 and 2007.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition against ISIL carried out a series of airstrikes overnight in the embattled Syrian town of Kobani, a monitor and activists said on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported intensifying clashes between Kurdish fighters defending Kobani and ISIL in the south end of the town, which lies on the Turkish border.

Kurdish activist and Kobani resident Mustefa Ebdi reported at least seven international airstrikes overnight.

He said the explosions could be heard 20 kilometres from Kobani, and shook the cars of people with him on the border between Turkey and Syria.

In southern Kobani, meanwhile, the Britain-based Observatory said fierce clashes under way for the past three days were continuing with reports of injuries on both sides.

The group said Kurdish YPG forces and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters were also shelling the militant group’s positions during the clashes.

Mr Ebdi also reported the clashes, saying the situation in Kobani “has progressed from defence to attack because of the air raids and the support the peshmerga and the [Arab rebel] Free Syrian Army are giving the YPG fighters”.

“The Kurdish fighters are advancing slowly because of the mines laid by ISIL. They are trying to retake territory,” he said.

ISIL began advancing on Kobani two months ago, hoping to seize the small Kurdish town and cement their grip over a large stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.

But US-led airstrikes, along with fierce fighting by YPG troops backed by around 150 Iraqi peshmerga, have so far prevented ISIL from overrunning the town completely.

The Observatory said on Sunday that the toll since fighting began had risen to 1,153, including 27 civilians, 398 Kurdish YPG fighters, 16 non-Kurdish rebels backing the YPG and 712 ISIL fighters.

* Associated Press and Agence France-Press