Car Bomb Attacks Near Baghdad Mall Kill 10, Say Police

Baghdad, Iraq : Two car bomb blasts outside a shopping mall in central Baghdad late on Friday killed at least 10 people and wounded another 28, police and medical sources said.

One explosion came from a parked car and the other was caused by an explosives-laden vehicle driven by a suicide bomber outside the Nakheel mall, a police colonel said.

The preliminary casualty toll was at least 10 people killed and 28 wounded, the officer said. An official in Baghdad's health department confirmed the figures.

An interior ministry source also confirmed the details of the attack, which he said took place just before midnight (2100 GMT).

The mall opened last year on Palestine street in central Baghdad and shops were likely to have remained open late during the weekend preceding next week's Eid al-Adha feast.

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The multi-storey shopping mall houses one of the city's most popular cinemas.

Interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan however said no casualties were reported inside the mall.

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There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the double bombing but all such attacks recently have been claimed by the ISIS.

The latest of these, on Tuesday, killed at least seven people near a hospital in Baghdad's busy district of Karrada.

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Karrada was still reeling from a July suicide truck bomb explosion that killed more than 300 people, the deadliest single bombing ever to hit the Iraqi capital.

ISIS has suffered a string of military defeats over the past year and the caliphate it proclaimed in June 2014 seems doomed.

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As the terrorist organisation loses territory across Iraq, observers and officials alike have warned that ISIS may revert to carrying out campaigns of terror attacks instead of attempting to hold fixed positions.