BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber driving a truck filled with explosives attacked a police checkpoint in southern Baghdad on Wednesday night, killing at least 15 people and wounding 45 others, Iraqi officials said.
Three police officers were among the dead and several were wounded, but most of the victims were civilians, officials said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Islamic State has carried out similar attacks as its territorial hold in Iraq weakens.
Iraqi forces are battling Islamic State fighters in western Mosul, where about 2,000 militants are engaged in fierce counterattacks. After beginning the operation to retake Mosul in October, the Iraqi authorities declared in January that they had liberated eastern Mosul, which is separated from the city’s western neighborhoods by the Tigris River.
Western Mosul is densely populated and has proved to be a much more difficult fight for Iraqi and coalition forces, which have resorted to greater use of artillery and airstrikes to clear and hold territory.
Airstrikes in western Mosul have resulted in a high number of civilian casualties, according to residents. The coalition led by the United States says that a strike in western Mosul on March 17 most likely resulted in civilian casualties after a building collapsed and that it is investigating the episode.
Iraqi witnesses have said that airstrikes this month killed scores of civilians. American officials have said that the munitions used by the coalition on March 17 should not have caused the entire building to come down, suggesting that militants might have deliberately gathered civilians there and planted other explosives that were detonated by airstrikes.
The militants have suffered a string of defeats over the past two years in the period leading up to the Mosul operation, but they have continued to carry out attacks in and around Baghdad, the capital. A series of large-scale bombings claimed by the Islamic State have struck Baghdad since the operation to retake Mosul began.
