Daesh suicide attacks kill 32 in southern Iraq

Two suicide car bombs claimed by Daesh killed at least 32 people and wounded 75 others in the center of the southern Iraqi city of Samawa on Sunday, police and medics said, Reuters reports.

The first blast was near a local government building and the second one about 60 meters (65 yards) away at a bus station, police sources said. The death toll was expected to keep rising.

Unverified online photographs showed a large plume of smoke rising above the buildings as well as burnt out cars and bodies on the ground at the site of one of the blasts, including several children. Police and firefighters carried victims on stretchers and in their arms.

Daesh said it had attacked a gathering of special forces in Samawa, 230 km (140 miles) south of the capital, with one car bomb and then blew up the second when security forces responded to the site.