47 people killed in Iraq blasts

BAGHDAD

At least 47 people were killed and 99 others wounded Friday in several explosions in capital Baghdad and in central Samarra, police said.

Forty people lost their lives and 75 others were wounded when two improvised explosive devices blew up at a market place. The first was remotely detonated and the second exploded after the arrival of security forces, a police colonel said.

Seven people were killed and 24 others wounded in suicide attacks in Samarra, some 130 kilometers north of Baghdad.

All the dead were from the pro-government Shiite militia of volunteers, Al-Hashid al-Sha’bi, according to police captain Ahmed Khidr al-Samaraa’i.

Iraq has been gripped by a security vacuum since June 2014 when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stormed the northern province of Mosul and declared what it calls a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.