TWIN ISIS ATTACKS LEAVES NEARLY 50 DEAD IN IRAQ

In twin attacks, ISIS militants killed at least 45 people in the Iraq's Shiite city of Nasiriyah, some 320 kilometers southeast of Baghdad on Thursday.

A UN official in Iraq "strongly condemned" the attacks targeting religious pilgrims.

"These barbaric acts of terrorism against innocent civilians, many of them pilgrims, confirm yet again the terrorists' total disregard for life and their despair and cowardice in the face of the victories of the Iraqi security forces which seized most of their strongholds across the country", Jan Kubis, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq wrote in a statement.

Governor of Iraq's southern Thi Qar province raised the death toll from the attack on a checkpoint and restaurant to 45.

Local officials added that an estimated 80 people were also injured in concurrent gun and car bomb attacks, claimed by ISIS-affiliated media.

Kubis extended his deepest condolences to the families of the deceased and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

Nasiriyah is the provincial capital of Shiite-dominated Dhi Qar.

ISIS has lost cities like Iraq's second-largest of Mosul in July, and it now controls less than 10 percent of the territory it once did. So as the group has lost cities, it has reverted insurgency like hit-and-run and suicide attacks.

The US Embassy in Baghdad also reported on Thursday that "three rockets impacted in or near the International Zone," using another name for the walled-off Green Zone in Baghdad, home to Iraqi and foreign government buildings.

There were no immediate reports of causalties from the rocket attacks.

The group still controls enclaves that include Hawija, a city in Kirkuk province, as well as the Hamrin Mountains in Diyala. They also have a presence in Anbar province along the Euphrates River Valley in Anah, Rawa and the border crossing to Syria at al-Qaim.