Militants unleashed attacks on Iraq’s majority Shia community on Monday, killing at least 43 people, the latest in relentless assaults that have challenged the Shia-led Government as it battles the Sunni-led insurgency by the Islamic State group.
A suicide bomber hit a mosque in Baghdad as Shia worshippers left after noon prayers, killing 17 people, while a triple car bombing in the holy city of Karbala killed 16. Iraq has been plunged into its worst crisis since the US troops left at the end of 2011 in the wake of the blitz by the Islamic State militants this summer.
The extremists group captured large chunks of land in western and northern Iraq, carving out a proto-state on the territory it controls between Syria and Iraq and imposing its own harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah. Since August, US warplanes have been carrying out airstrikes against the group as Iraqi and Kurdish security forces work to retake territory it has seized.