Suicide truck bomb kills over 100 in Iraq

Baghdad, November 24 

A suicide truck bomb killed over 100 people, most of them Iranian Shi’ite pilgrims, at a petrol station in the city of Hilla 100 km south of Baghdad on Thursday, police and medical sources said.

Islamic State (IS), the ultra hardline Sunni militant group that considers all Shi'ites to be apostates, claimed responsibility the attack in an online statement.

The group is also fighting off a US-backed offensive on its stronghold Mosul, in northern Iraq, in which Iranian-trained Shi’ite militias are taking part.

The pilgrims were en route back to Iran from the Iraqi Shi’ite holy city of Kerbala, where they had commemorated Arbaeen, the 40th day of mourning for the killing of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, in the 7th century AD, medical sources said.

The gas station has a restaurant on its premises that is popular with travellers. Five pilgrim buses were torched by the blast from the explosives-laden truck. —Reuters