TEHRAN (AP) Regional powerhouse Iran has pledged enduring support for the government of Iraq in its battle against an deadly insurgency spearheaded by the Islamic State group.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Tuesday that Iran has supported Baghdad “from the first day and will remain on that path until the last day.”
It was Abadi’s first foreign visit since taking office in September.
“Choosing Iran as my first destination after taking office indicates the depth of ties,” he said, according to IRNA. “Terrorism is a threat to all regional countries and we are sure Iran will stand by us.”
The Iran-Iraq alliance highlights some of the complex political dynamics spawned by the emergence of the Islamic State group as a major threat earlier this year. The radical group initially backed by regional Arab rivals of Iran has captured and held large swaths of territory in eastern Syria and northwestern Iraq, including the major northern Iraqi city of Mosul, and threatens to expand southward toward Baghdad.
Rouhani, in his Tuesday comments, said greater regional cooperation among affected countries was the only solution to confronting the terrorist menace.
“We have no doubt that boosting friendly relations between Iran and Iraq will secure the interests of both countries and will serve the interests of the region,” he said. “Regional countries should confront terrorism in a united and coordinated way in order to uproot this phenomenon.”
Inside Iraq, insurgents continued their recent wave of attacks on Tuesday as a string of bombings in and near Baghdad killed 30 people. Police officials said the deadliest attack took place Tuesday afternoon when a double car bomb attack hit Habaybina restaurant in the Shia-majority district of Talibiya in eastern Baghdad, killing 19 people and wounding 32 others.
Earlier, a bomb struck at an outdoor market in the southern district of Abu Dashir, a mostly Shia neighborhood, killing four people and wounding nine, police officials said.
A little bit later, a bomb that went off near a small restaurant in central Baghdad killed five people and wounded 12, the officials said. Another bomb exploded at a commercial street in the town of Madian, just south of Baghdad, killing two people and wounding four.
On Monday, militants unleashed a wave of deadly attacks on Iraq’s majority Shiite community, killing at least 43 people. In the holy city of Karbala the site of year-round pilgrimages four separate car bombs went off simultaneously, killing at least 26 people.
The attacks on the Shias are likely calculated by the Sunni extremists to sow fear among Iraqis on both sides of the sectarian divide.
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