BAGHDAD

Six people have been killed and five others wounded in a car bomb targeted at an Iraqi army checkpoint, Thursday, in southern Baghdad, security sources have said.

A suicide attacker drove his car into an Iraqi army barricade in Yusufiyah in southern Baghdad. The explosion left six people dead including an officer, three soldiers, a civilian and the bomber. Five people were also wounded in the attack, a security source said.

The number of deaths could not yet be independently verified.

The suicide attack occurred less than 24 hours after two IED explosions in eastern Baghdad in which three people were killed and 12 others were wounded.

According to the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, 2014 witnessed the most violence in the last number of years because of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s atrocities in the country.

Iraq has been gripped by a security vacuum since last June, when the ISIL group stormed the northern province of Mosul and declared what it called a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.