Twin suicide attacks kill 32 in Iraq; IS says we’ve done it

Baghdad, May 1 

Two suicide car bombs claimed by Islamic State killed 32 persons and wounded 75 others in the centre of the southern Iraqi city of Samawa on Sunday, the police and medics said.

The first blast was near a local government building and the second one about 60 m away at a bus station, sources in the police 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. Policemen and firefighters carried victims on stretchers and in their arms.

The IS said it had attacked a gathering of special forces in Samawa, 230 km south of the capital, with a car bomb and then blew up the second when security forces responded to the site. It  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 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The quota-based governing system put in place by the US at the time is being challenged by hundreds of protesters who camped out overnight in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone after storming the parliament building. — Reuters

Suspected IS bomber kills two policemen in Turkey

Two policemen were killed and 23 others injured in a suicide car bomb attack on the police headquarters in the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, the governor and police sources said, in one of two attacks on Sunday

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but sources said the police raided the home of a suspected IS militant believed to have carried out the attack and detained his father for DNA tests and questioning

The Gaziantep-based suspect is believed to have detonated a bomb-laden vehicle near the gates of police headquarters on a street housing several other provincial government buildings whose windows were smashed

Hackers publish US military ‘hit list’ 

IS hackers have published a “hit list” of over 70 US military personnel who have been involved in drone strikes against terror targets in Syria and asked their followers to “kill them wherever they are”

According to The Sunday Times, they have links with Britain and call themselves ‘Islamic State Hacking Division’ and circulated online the names, home addresses and photographs of more than 70 US staff

They urged supporters: “Kill them wherever they are, knock on their doors and behead them, stab them, shoot them in the face or bomb them” 

Google-style driverless cars for attacks 

IS technicians are working to develop a Google-style driverless car that could navigate itself into a crowded area before detonating an explosive device, a NATO security expert has warned

The IS’ research and development department in the terror group’s de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa, is believed to be producing the vehicles at the same time as US Internet giant Google attempts to perfect the same technology

If successful, the invention could prove to be a headache for security services in Britain, Europe and North America