VideoERBIL, Iraq — At least 80 people, many of them Shiite pilgrims on their way home to Iran, were killed on Thursday when an Islamic State suicide bomber detonated a truck filled with explosives at a roadside service station in southern Iraq, local officials said. Until the bombing on Thursday, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility in a statement, the event had been carried out safely. A victory in Mosul could represent the end of the Islamic State’s control of territory in Iraq. In recent months, the United States has rushed intelligence advisers and new drones to Iraq to counter car bomb attacks in Baghdad and the south. The Islamic State considers Shiites apostates, and it has long carried out a campaign of sectarian killings in Iraq.

Source: New York Times November 24, 2016 18:32 UTC