UPDATE - Daesh strikes back in Iraq’s ‘liberated’ eastern Mosul

By Ahmed Qassim

NINEVEH, Iraq (AA) – At least 23 people were killed Thursday when Daesh terrorists carried out multiple suicide car-bomb attacks in eastern Mosul, the Iraqi army said in a televised statement.

According to the statement, three suicide attackers simultaneously drove bomb-laden cars into Mosul’s Kokjeli district -- which the army captured in October -- before detonating them.

"The car bombs went off near a security building and a local market," Army Brigadier-General Aziz Khaled al-Qureishi told Anadolu Agency earlier Thursday.

The army has put the total death toll at 23, including eight police personnel and 15 civilians. It has not provided the number of those injured by the blasts.

Thursday’s attack was one of the deadliest to be seen in the city since Iraqi forces wrested control of some 40 districts of eastern Mosul from the Daesh terrorist group.

Security forces have since imposed a strict curfew on the entire neighborhood.

In mid-October, the Iraqi army -- backed by U.S.-led coalition warplanes and local allies on the ground -- launched a major offensive to retake Mosul, Daesh’s last major stronghold in northern Iraq.

Officials in Baghdad have vowed to retake the city, which fell to Daesh in mid-2014, by year’s end.