Baghdad // Militants unleashed a wave of suicide attacks across Iraq on Monday, killing at least 29 people and wounding dozens, officials said.
The violence – which included suicide bombings claimed by ISIL, clashes and mortar fire – came as Iraqi forces said on Monday they had entered the town of Hit, a week after launching an operation to retake the town from ISIL fighters.
Commanders from Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces, who are leading the offensive, said they were clearing ISIL fighters from Hit’s northern neighbourhoods as they push toward the town centre.
Hit lies along an ISIL supply line that links the extremist militants in Iraq to those in Syria.
Thousands of civilians were fleeing as Iraqi troops advance under cover of heavy air strikes and artillery fire. Families, many with small children and elderly relatives, walked for hours through desert littered with roadside bombs to escape the violence. Iraq’s counterterrorism forces estimate more than 20,000 civilians are trapped inside the town.
In a string of attacks on Monday, the deadliest took place in the southern province of Nasiriyah, where at least 14 people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a restaurant frequented by Shiite paramilitary militia fighters.
Another 27 people were wounded in the attack on the well-known restaurant, which is located on the main highway that links the capital of Baghdad with the southern provinces, a police officer said.
At around the same time, a suicide car bomber set off his explosives-laden vehicle in a commercial area in the oil-rich city of Basra, killing at least five people and wounding 10 others, another police officer said.
Pieces of flesh and debris littered the bloodstained pavement as thick black smoke billowed from the area. The attack also damaged up to 30 cars.
Basra governor Majid Al Nasrawi said that ISIL, “after the losses it suffered in western areas, is seeking to move the battle to the southern areas” where many of the forces fighting the extremists are from.
ISIL overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes and training have since regained significant ground, most recently in the western province of Anbar.
Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber rammed his car into a security checkpoint in the capital’s northeastern suburb of Sadr al-Qanat, killing six troops and wounding 13 others.
Another suicide car bomber hit a headquarters of paramilitary troops in the town of Mishahda, north of the capital, killing four troops and wounding 10 others.
ISIL issued statements claiming responsibility for the blasts. The group frequently carries out suicide bombings in Iraq targeting security forces and civilians.
The extremist group also launched an attack in the Baghdadi area in Anbar province, sparking clashes in which five members of pro-government forces were killed and seven wounded.
And mortar fire struck houses in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding seven.
The Iraqi army, along with pro-government militias, launched an offensive last month aimed at retaking Mosul, the country’s second largest city, which is under ISIL control. Their progress in villages outside the city has been slowed by roadside bombs and other booby traps.
Iraqi officials said troops on Monday recaptured a key village outside Mosul after days of heavy fighting. Iraqi forces retook the village of Al Nasr, near the Tigris river, after destroying six suicide car bombers that had tried to attack them, Lt Col Mohammed Al Wagaa from the Iraqi army said.
As Iraqi forces backed by a US-led coalition have advanced against ISIL on a number of fronts in recent months, extremists have retaliated with a number of large scale bombings targeting civilians. Like the Basra governor, a US army officer said that as ISIL loses territory, it is increasingly turning to bombings in a bid to stay relevant.
The group is “losing its prominence on the battlefield, and so what we’ve kinda seen recently is a lot more what we call high profile attacks”, Captain Chance McCraw said.
The extremists are seeking “to still stay relevant in the media, because that’s how they get their message out”, Mr McCraw said.
According to the United Nations figures, at least 1,119 Iraqis were killed and 1,561 were wounded in March, a sharp increase from the previous month, when 670 people were killed and 1,290 wounded. * Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
