Iraq: Toll Rises in Market Bombing

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/world/middleeast/iraq-toll-rises-in-market-bombing.html

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The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a bombing in eastern Iraq, and officials on Saturday said that the death toll had risen to 100 people, with 20 more missing. The bomb tore through a marketplace on Friday in Khan Bani Saad, above, a mostly Shiite town in Diyala Province. It also wounded at least 133 people, the police said, and destroyed several buildings. Government troops and Shiite militias months ago wrested back parts of the province from the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a statement taking responsibility for the blast, ISIS, which has often singled out Shiites as targets, declared that the attack was revenge for what it called a massacre of Sunnis in the town of Hawija farther north. The statement may have been referring to an episode in March, during a battle that eventually drove ISIS from Tikrit. Residents of Hawija reported at the time that dozens of ISIS fighters had been killed by their commanders for trying to flee the battlefield. ISIS, which follows an extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam, views Shiites as apostates and has often targeted Shiite civilians. Its statement declared that it used three tons of explosives to kill and injure more than 180 “apostates.” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that ISIS was targeting civilians in revenge for recent government advances.