Baghdad: A car bomb killed at least eight people outside the northern city of Mosul on Monday, Iraq officials said, in the latest in a series of attacks to target the country’s Shiites since the US withdrawal last month.
Violence has surged across Iraq since the last American troops left the country, with a string of bombings that has left at least 150 people dead since the beginning of the year.
Most of the attacks appear to be aimed at Iraq’s Shiite majority, suggesting Sunni insurgents are seeking to undermine the Shiite-dominated government.
Monday’s blast struck a Shiite district outside of Mosul, a predominantly Sunni city some 225 miles (360 kilometres) northwest of Baghdad, a police official said. An official at Mosul’s Al-Jomhouri hospital confirmed the death toll, and said at least six people were wounded in the attack.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.
A member of the city’s local council, Qusai Abbas, said the car bomb blew up near a group of houses where members of the Shabak minority have settled since being driven out of Mosul by Sunni militants during fierce sectarian fighting a few years ago.
The Shabaks are ethnic Turkomen and Shiite Muslims who mostly live in villages east of Mosul, the provincial capital of the ethnically mixed Ninevah province that is predominantly Sunni Muslim.
Other Sunni insurgent groups have battled Kurdish militias for control over the city, Iraq’s third largest, killing thousands of civilians. (AP)