BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – An explosion in Iraq’s southern city of Basra on Tuesday killed and injured several people, officials said.
The governor of Basra, Asaad al-Eidani, said in an audio recording cited by the Iraqi News Agency (INA), that “the explosion was caused by a motorcycle carrying explosives in the center of the province, killing four civilians and wounding four others”.
Other reports put the number of the fatalities at over a dozen and the number of the wounded at over 20.
A police source told Reuters that an initial investigation showed that a motorcycle rigged with explosives could have been behind the blast, though police are still investigating what happened.
The explosion took place in the city center, near a main hospital. It set fire to at least one vehicle and damaged a minibus, Reuters reported.a
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which has been rare in southern cities in recent years.
“Daesh’s fingerprints are all over the deadly bomb attack,” Basra Provincial Governor Asaad al-Eidani told reporters.
The governor also declared three days of mourning following the terrorist attack.
War-ravaged Iraq has suffered years of violent unrest since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Daesh terrorists were driven out by Iraq’s army in 2017. But the group continues to operate underground and stage attacks in Iraq and Syria, and is believed to have 10,000 active militants in both countries, according to a UN report cited by AFP.
In recent weeks, Daesh has claimed several deadly attacks that targeted Kurdish security officials in northern Iraq.
The last major attack claimed by Daesh was a July bombing in the Baghdad district of Sadr City, which killed 30 people. Another Daesh attack in September was an assault on a checkpoint south of Kirkuk that killed 13 policemen.
Daesh has intensified its terrorist attacks in Iraq since January 2020, when the United States assassinated top Iranian anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani and Hashd al-Sha’abi deputy commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, near Baghdad International Airport.
Last month, the secretary general of Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba resistance group held U.S. occupation forces responsible for the upsurge in terrorist attacks by the Daesh terrorists across the country, saying the current situation proves that terror outfits are all tools in the hands of hegemonic powers.