At least 48 people have been killed and many more injured, after a car bomb exploded in southern Baghdad.
The blast is the third to strike the Iraqi capital this week, with the total casualties climbing to over 70.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published online.
Today’s car bomb targeted the same Shi’ite Bayaa neighbourhood where a car bomb killed four people on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Islamic State killed 18 people with a car bomb in another largely Shi’ite area of the city, Sadr City.
The Islamic State has been behind a number of attacks on Shi’ite areas over the last year, and as the group is slowly pushed out of Mosul and increasingly surrounded around Raqqa, it has begun to step up terror attacks elsewhere.
Baghdad was rocked by a series of deadly bomb attacks over the new year period, but calm had begun to return to the city over the last month.
