The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a bombing Saturday east of Baghdad, according to a statement posted on an IS-affiliated website. The attack killed at least 21 people and wounded at least 42 others, according to Iraqi police and hospital officials. The IS statement described the attack as a three-ton truck bombing.

The attack targeted Shiite civilians shopping in an open-air market selling fruit, vegetables and meat in Nahrawan, according to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. The IS statement and initial reports from local officials at the scene claimed the bombing targeted Shiite pilgrims walking to Baghdad’s holy Kadhimiyah shrine.

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The Syrian military is reportedly readying for an assault on the city of Aleppo.

“The large scale operation to wipe out the militancy in Aleppo province is expected to start in the next ten days,” Syrian military sources cited by Iran’s Fars news said on Thursday. “Fresh recruits in large groups are heading to Aleppo from the coastal province of Latakia.”

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An airstrike that hit a hospital in Syria killed 27 people, including children and one of the last few pediatricians in Aleppo, rights groups said.

Al Quds field hospital was hit by a missile from a fighter jet Wednesday, witnesses said. It’s unclear whom the fighter jet belonged to.

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More than 800 al-Qaeda fighters have been killed in an assault by the Yemeni government and Arab allies on the group’s main stronghold of Mukalla, according to the Saudi-led coalition.

The coalition said in a statement, carried by the official Saudi news agency SPA late on Sunday, that many al-Qaeda members had fled the city, the provincial capital of Hadramout, which they had held for a year.

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Heavy clashes erupted Sunday between Kurdish peshmerga forces and Shiite paramilitary troops inside a contested town north of Baghdad, a spokesman said.

A quarrel between two neighbors, a Kurd and a Shiite Turkoman, evolved into a military confrontation between the peshmerga forces and Shiite fighters who share the town of Tuz Khormato, said Karim al-Nouri, the spokesman for Iraq’s paramilitary forces — which are made up mainly of Shiite militias.

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