Reuters has more on the claim of responsibility by IS for today's attack on a shopping mall in eastern Baghdad that killed at least 18 people.
IS said that four of its militants targeted a gathering of "rejectionist heathens," a term used by IS to slur Shi'ite Muslims.
The claim of responsibility matches reports that says four militants were involved in the attack on the mall in the New Baghdad neighborhood.
The IS group made its claim of responsibility for the east Baghdad mall attack in an online statement.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack on a mall in eastern Baghdad.
AFP's report on the Baghdad mall attack is different to the Wall Street Journal's.
While the WSJ said that no hostages were taken in the attack on a mall in the east of the city, AFP are quoting a senior police officer as saying that "the hostages have been freed."
At least 12 people were killed in the attack, AFP say.
Reuters are reporting on another explosion in Baghdad.
At least seven people were killed and 15 wounded when a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a commercial street in the southeastern Sunni suburb of Nahrawan, police and medical sources said.
With the details of the attack on a shopping center in eastern Baghdad still very unclear, there are separate reports that at least 20 people have been killed and 50 wounded in two bomb blasts northeast of Baghdad.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has said that it has delivered food, medical items and blankets to Madaya in rural Damascus and the Shi'ite villages of Foua and Kefraya near Idlib city.
"The operation has started. It is likely to last a few days. This is a very positive development. But it must not be just a one-off distribution. To relieve the suffering of these tens of thousands of people, there has to be regular access to these areas," said the head of the ICRC delegation in Syria, Marianne Gasser.
AFP is now reporting that the Baghdad mall attack is over.
Here is the Wall Street Journal's report on the events in eastern Baghdad where unknown militants attacked a shopping center in the New Baghdad neighborhood.
The WSJ report -- which cites police and other Iraqi officials -- contradicts other reporting that said gunmen stormed the Al-Jawhara mall, taking hostages, after detonating a car bomb.
WSJ says there were two attackers who were suicide bombers -- other reports said there were four gunmen.
Two suicide bombers attacked a shopping mall in a bustling neighborhood of eastern Baghdad on Monday evening, killing at least nine people and wounding 22 others, Iraqi officials said.
WSJ report that the attackers did not storm the mall and take hostages but killed themselves outside on the street.
The attackers didn’t take any hostages and killed themselves on a busy street outside the shopping mall, police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
And the siege is now over, WSJ report.
The siege lasted less than an hour, police said.
So what happened? According to WSJ this was the sequence of events:
- Two attackers detonated a car bomb in a parked vehicle outside the Al-Jawhara mall early this evening
- The attackers then threw hand grenades at a crowd of people on the sidewalk
- The attackers also sprayed the pedestrians with bullets
- The two men then detonated their suicide vests as they stood on the sidewalk outside the mall.
The Wall Street Journal's Matt Bradley has these comments about the attack on an eastern Baghdad mall by unknown gunmen.