At least 70 Shia pilgrims have been killed in a truck bomb attack at a road stop in Iraq, officials say.
The blast struck at a petrol station and restaurant near al-Hilla, some 100km (60 miles) south of Baghdad.
The road stop was full of people returning from the Arbaeen pilgrimage in the city of Karbala. Iranians and Bahrainis were among the victims.
The Islamic State group said it carried out the attack, and claimed the death toll was more than 80.
U.S.-led forces carried out at least 13 air strikes in Syria close to the Iraqi border on Wednesday, a second day of targeting Islamic State militants who have seized land on both sides of the frontier, a group that tracks the Syrian war said.
Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters the raids had hit the border town of Albu Kamal and surrounding areas.
Albu Kamal, on the main Euphrates River valley highway, is one of the most important border crossings between Iraq and Syria, along a frontier that Islamic State wants to erase after seizing territory both sides and declaring a caliphate.
It links Islamic State’s de facto capital Raqqa in Syria with strategic front lines in western Iraq and militant-held territory down the Euphrates to the western and southern outskirts of Baghdad.
A chain of car bomb explosions has claimed the lives of at least 19 people and injured dozens more across Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad. Iraqi security officials say the serial blasts occurred minutes apart in a Shia neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad on Wednesday.
Sources say the attacks started when an explosive-laden car rammed into a checkpoint manned by traffic police in the volatile area. At least five people were killed in the first deadly attack. Seconds later, a car bomb explosion at nearby markets killed 14 people. Sources say at least three traffic police officers are among the victims.
Medical sources say more than 30 people have been also wounded in the terrorist attacks, while several cars and nearby building were damaged in two blasts.
No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the attack bore the hallmarks of Takfiri militants fighting the Iraqi government.
The blasts occurs as US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Iraq on his first visit after the formation of a new Iraqi government. He made an unannounced visit to Baghdad at the start of a Middle East tour aimed at building support for the fight against the ISIL terrorist group.
