BAGHDAD: A car bomb near pet and vegetable markets in Baghdad killed 15 people and wounded another 40 on Wednesday, Iraqi security and medical officials said. Several cars were damaged in the attack.

Hours earlier, a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into a police checkpoint on a highway just south of Baghdad, killing four civilians and three policemen, a police officer and a medical official said.

They said 24 people were wounded in the explosion. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with reporters.

The United Nations said on Wednesday that at least 1,119 Iraqis died in violence in September.

But the real number was likely much higher since the UN figure did not include killings in areas controlled by the Islamic State (IS) group.

The extremist group seized around a third of the country in a lightning offensive over the summer, plunging Iraq into its worst crisis since the last US troops withdrew at the end of 2011.

Published in Dawn, October 2nd, 2014