Car bombs killed 20 people, including five soldiers, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and the city of Ramadi to the west on Saturday, police and medical sources said, in attacks that resembled operations carried out by ISIS militants.
Two bombs exploded in separate attacks in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite Amil district, said a police source. "A driver parked his car and went to a cigarette stall then he disappeared. Then his car blew up, killing passersby," said the police source, describing one of the two attacks in Amil.
In the mostly Shi'ite al-Amin area of Baghdad, another car bomb killed eight people, medical sources said. The attack by a suicide bomber on a checkpoint in Ramadi in western Anbar province killed five soldiers.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombings. President Barack Obama on Friday approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of U.S. forces on the ground, to advise and retrain Iraqis in their battle against ISIS.
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