A massive car bomb explosion has ripped through a busy market area in the eastern part of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, killing at least nine people and injuring more than two dozen others.

An Iraqi police officer said the blast on Monday took place after an explosives-laden car went off at the wholesale Jamila market in Baghdad’s Shia district of Sadr City.

The explosion also wounded 25 other people, the police officer added, saying the death toll was expected to rise higher.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks; however, Daesh Takfiri militants have many times carried out large-scale attacks targeting the Shia community in Iraq’s capital.

The blast comes as Iraqi forces, backed by Hashd al-Sha’abi volunteer fighters, continue to make gains against Daesh in northern Iraq, pushing the terrorist to the verge of collapse in the country.

Iraqi army soldiers and allied fighters have dislodged the Daesh Takfiri militants from almost all neighborhoods of the northern town of Tal Afar which is one of the last strongholds of the extremists in the country.

The terror group, which emerged in Iraq in 2014, lost the northern city of Mosul, its last urban base in the country, to Iraqi forces last month.

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