26 of wedding party die in village after two suicide bombers walk in with explosives-laden belts
Suspicion is likely to fall on the Islamic State, which has staged similar attacks in the past. REPRESENTATIONâu00c2u0080u00c2u0088PIC
Baghdad: A twin suicide bombing struck a village wedding north of Baghdad as the wedding party gathered in the evening hours, killing at least 26 people and wounding dozens, a government spokesman said yesterday.
The attack, which took place late Wednesday, began when one suicide bomber wearing an explosives-laden belt walked into the wedding party assembled in an open area in Hajaj, near the city of Tikrit.
The bomber detonated his explosives, only to be followed by the second attacker who blew himself up when people had gathered to help the victims of the first explosion, said
provincial spokesman Ali al-Hamdani. He said 26 people were killed, most of them children, and up to 67 were wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but suspicion is likely to fall on the Islamic State group, which has staged similar attacks in the past. The wedding party was for a family that had been displaced from Iraq's western Anbar province and that is affiliated with a major anti-IS tribe there.
IS had captured Tikrit during its blitz across Iraq in the summer of 2014 when the Sunni militant group seized nearly a third of the country's territory. Iraqi forces drove the militants from the city in April 2015, but IS has since then managed to launch deadly attacks in and around Tikrit.
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