REPORTED BY KALAHAN DENG
Asuicide car bomb blast killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 60 on Monday in Baghdad’s Shiite majority neighbourhood of Sadr City.
Police officials said the bomber struck on a square where daily labourers were waiting for jobs, causing one of the highest casualty tolls in the capital in months.
Isil claimed responsibility for the attack via its propaganda agency Amaq, saying the “martyrdom operation” had killed about 40 people.
It also claimed another bombing on Saturday that left at least 27 dead in a busy area of central Baghdad.
France, one of the most active members of the US-led coalition fighting the Sunni extremist group, is particularly concerned over the return of a large contingent of French jihadists from Syria and Iraq.
“Taking action against terrorism here in Iraq is also preventing acts of terrorism on our own soil,” Hollande said at a base where French soldiers have been training elite Iraqi forces.
Hollande, the only major Western head of state to have visited Baghdad since the coalition was set up in 2014, stressed that supporting Iraq was one of the surest ways of securing Europe.