The death toll from a two car bombs claimed by Islamic State in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa has risen to 32 and is expected to keep rising.

At least 75 people were wounded in the blasts on Sunday.

The first blast was near a local government building and the second one about 60 metres away at a bus station, police sources said.

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Unverified online photographs showed a large plume of smoke rising above the buildings as well as burnt out cars and bodies on the ground at the site of one of the blasts, including several children.

Police and firefighters carried victims on stretchers and in their arms.

Islamic State holds positions mostly in Sunni areas of the country’s north and west, far from the mainly Shi’ite southern provinces where Samawa is located.

Such attacks are relatively rare.

The rise of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents has exacerbated Iraq’s sectarian conflict, mostly between Shi’ites and Sunnis, which emerged after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

The quota-based governing system put in place by the United States at the time is being challenged by hundreds of protesters who camped out overnight in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone after storming the parliament building.