Car bombs kill at least 38 in Baghdad

A series of car bomb attacks in Iraq's capital killed at least 38 people in Shia areas Saturday, authorities said.

The assault comes as the country faces its greatest challenge since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops, with extremists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) now holding vast swaths of an Iraq weakened by months of bloody sectarian violence.

Police officials said the first attack happened Saturday night when a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint in Baghdad's northern district of Khazimiyah, killing 13 people, including three police officers, and wounding 28, according to the Associated Press.

The second car bombing, targeting a commercial street in Shula district in northwestern Baghdad, killed seven people and wounded 18, police told the Associated Press. The blast damaged several shops and cars.

Also in Shula, police said a suicide car bomb attack on a security checkpoint killed 18 people and wounded dozens others, the AP reported. Reuters reported a higher overall death toll of 45, citing police and medical officials.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, yet Sunni insurgents frequently target Shia areas.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Saturday it launched an airstrike north of the town of Tal Afar, hitting a small ISIL fighting unit and destroying an armed vehicle. It said two other airstrikes northwest of Hit in Anbar province targeted two small militant units.

The U.S. military also said it conducted multiple airdrops Friday near the northern town of Beiji to resupply Iraqi security forces operating there. The airdrops delivered food and water, as well as 16,000 pounds of ammunition, the military said.

Also Saturday, the governor of Iraq's Salahuddin province said ISIL group militants killed Raad al-Azzawi, a cameraman for Iraq's Salahuddin Television. Governor Raed Ibrahim said the extremist group killed al-Azzawi on Friday in the city of Tikrit.

ISIL has beheaded a number of journalists in Syria, saying the killings are in retaliation to U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

Reporters Without Borders said last month that the militants had threatened to kill al-Azzawi, a father of three, for refusing to join the Sunni militant group. The media watchdog said al-Azzawi was abducted on Sept. 7.

Also in Tikrit, an attempted attack on the Camp Speicher military base was foiled after soldiers killed four suspected ISIL militants, authorities said. Two officials at the camp said the four men— one of them identified as an Indonesian national — attempted to break through the gates of the camp in a suicide attack with a truck loaded with explosives. They were unable to break through, the officials said, and guards killed the four men. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to brief journalists.

Camp Speicher is an air base that previously served as a U.S. military facility.

Wire services