Suicide attack kills dozens at football stadium in Iraq

A suicide bomber has blown himself up at a football stadium south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, killing at least 29 people and injuring 60 others.
The blast in Iskandariya, a mixed Sunni and Shia Muslim town, happened in the early evening on Friday at the end of an amateur football game, Falah al-Khafaji, the head of security for Babel province, said.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - which controls large areas of the country's north and west - later claimed responsibility for the attack.
An apparent escalation of large bombings in areas outside ISIL's control suggests that Iraqi government forces may be stretched thin after recent gains against the group in the western and northern provinces.
At least 60 people were killed earlier this monthin an attack claimed by the group 80km further south, in Hilla, when an explosives-laden fuel tanker slammed into a government checkpoint.
Thousands take to the streets
Separately, thousands of people rallied in Baghdad in support of influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who has taken the lead in protests demanding government reform.
Al-Sadr's associate, Sheik Asad al-Nasiri, delivered a message from the cleric at the rally in the capital, giving Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi 24 hours to implement wide-ranging reforms such as installing technocrats in key political positions.
Otherwise, al-Sadr's message said, the protesters would not limit themselves to sit-ins outside the heavily-fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, where the government is headquartered and where al-Sadr's followers demonstrated last week.
The weekly rallies in Baghdad are meant to put pressure on Iraq's political leadership.
The prime minister's efforts to implement reform have been thwarted by his own political mis-steps as well as the country's increasingly sectarian politics.
Last month, Abadi, now a year and a half into a four-year term, said he wanted to replace ministers with technocrats to challenge a system of patronage that critics say encourages corruption by distributing posts along political, ethnic and sectarian lines.
Sadr and his supporters have held regular demonstrations demanding the government tackle corruption, which is eating into Baghdad's resources even as it struggles with falling revenues due to a slump in global oil prices and the high financial cost of fighting ISIL.