Five killed in Iraq suicide attacks

At least five people were killed and some 20 wounded Saturday in three suicide bomb attacks near Iraq's capital Baghdad and in Salahudin province, security sources said.

Four people were killed and more than 15 wounded around noon when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a popular market in the town of Mashahda, some 25 km north of Baghdad, an interior ministry source told Xinhua, adding that women and children were among the victims.

The toll could rise as ambulances and civilian vehicles evacuated the victims to different hospitals and medical centres in the town and in Baghdad, the source said.

In Salahudin province, a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden vehicle into a base of Shia militiamen who volunteered to fight the Islamic State (IS) militants, and blew it up near the provincial capital city of Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, leaving at least one militiaman dead and four others wounded, a provincial security source said.

Also in the province, a suicide truck bomber backed by six vehicles carrying IS militants, launched an attack at dawn on an air base, known as Camp Speicher, north of Tikrit, but Iraqi security forces repelled the attack, the source said.

Heavy firing by the troops blew up the truck before it could reach its target on the northern edge of the air base and forced the six other vehicles to withdraw from the scene, the source said, without giving further details about casualties.

The security situation began to drastically deteriorate in Iraq since June 10 when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and hundreds of IS militants who took control of the country's northern city of Mosul.

The militants later seized swathes of territory after Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.