Suicide blast kills around 100 in Iraq

A suicide truck bomb killed about 100 people, most of them Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims, at a petrol station in the city of Hilla 100 km (62 miles) south of Baghdad yesterday, police and medical sources said.

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Islamic State (IS), the ultra-hardline Sunni militant group that considers all Shias to be apostates, claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement.

The group is also fighting off a US-backed offensive on its stronghold Mosul, in northern Iraq, in which Iranian-trained Shi'ite militias are taking part.

The pilgrims were en route back to Iran from the Iraqi Shi'ite holy city of Kerbala, where they had commemorated Arbaeen, the 40th day of mourning for the killing of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, in the 7th century AD, the medical sources said.

The gas station has a restaurant in its premises that is popular with travelers. Five pilgrim buses were torched by the force of the blast from the explosives-laden truck, a police official said.

Islamic State has intensified attacks over the past month in areas out of its control in efforts to weaken the offensive launched on October 17 to retake Mosul, the last major city under IS control in Iraq.

Iran's Foreign Ministry condemned the attack without giving a casualties toll. Tehran will continue to support Iraq's ''relentless fight against terrorism," ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Meanwhile, AFP reports, Falah al-Radhi, head of the provincial security committee for Babylon, the province where the bombing happened, said it had targeted several buses.

"A large truck exploded among them. It was a suicide attack," he told AFP.

Videos circulating on social media showed debris scattered over a large area along the main highway linking Baghdad to the main southern port city of Basra.

"There are completely charred corpses at the scene," said Radhi, who added that at least 20 wounded were transferred to nearby hospitals.

The Joint Operations Command in Baghdad issued a statement saying the truck was packed with 500 litres of ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound used in many explosive devices.

Up to 20 million people visited Karbala, home to the mausoleum of Imam Hussein, for Arbaeen this year. According to the Iraqi authorities, around three million of them were Iranians.

Iraq had deployed around 25,000 members of the security forces in and around the shrine city, which lies southwest of Baghdad, to protect the pilgrims from a feared IS attack.

The jihadist group, which is losing ground in Mosul, has carried out a series of high-profile diversionary attacks since Iraqi forces launched a huge offensive against their northern stronghold last month.

Maan al-Saadi, a commander with the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS), told AFP on the front line in Mosul that his forces were fighting IS in the neighbourhood of Al-Khadraa.

"They cannot flee. They have two choices -- give up or die," he said.

Over the past few days, Iraqi forces have cut off the main supply line running from Mosul to the western border with Syria, where IS still controls the city of Raqa.

The US-led coalition also bombed bridges over the Tigris river that splits Mosul in two, reducing the jihadists' ability to resupply the eastern front.