A suicide car bomb killed at least five people south of Baghdad on Tuesday, officials said, breaking a relative calm that followed a spate of deadly attacks last week.
The 10:30 am (0730 GMT) blast near an Iraqi army checkpoint in Mahmudiyah, 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the capital, also left at least 14 others wounded, according to an interior ministry official and an official at the town’s hospital.
Among the victims were at least one soldier killed and one other wounded, the officials said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mahmudiyah lies within a confessionally mixed region known as the “Triangle of Death” because of the frequency of insurgent attacks during the worst of Iraq’s insurgency in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Sunni militants often launch attacks in a bid to destabilise the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.
Tuesday’s violence came after four days of relative calm in Iraq following a spate of attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda’s front group from January 15-17 that left at least 88 people dead, according to an AFP tally.
Iraq suicide car bomb kills five
