Medical sources confirmed on Thursday (August 7) two car bombs in the Kurdish-held Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk had killed 11 people.
The blasts went off near a Shii'ite mosque holding displaced people, security sources said.
The attack comes after an offensive launched by Islamic State fighters which has routed Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and caused tens of thousands of people to flee.
The
Islamic State, which is considered more extreme than al- Qaeda, sees Iraq's majority Shi'ites and minorities such as Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish ethno-religious community, as infidels.
The Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on Kurdish forces in a weekend sweep, prompting tens of thousands from the ancient Yazidi community to flee the town of Sinjar for surrounding mountains.
Some of the many thousands trapped by Islamic State fighters on Sinjar mountain have been rescued in the past 24 hours, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, adding that 200,000 had fled the fighting.
The militants extended their gains in northern Iraq on Thursday, seizing more towns and strengthening a foothold near the Kurdish region in an offensive that has alarmed the Baghdad government and regional powers.
The advance forced thousands of residents of Iraq's Christian towns to flee, fearing they would be subjected to the demands the Sunni militants made in other captured areas - leave, convert to Islam or face death.
In Rome,
Pope Francis appealed to world leaders to help end the crisis in northern Iraq after the Islamic State advance forced thousands of Christians to flee.
The militant group said in a statement on its Twitter account that its fighters had seized 15 towns, the strategic Mosul dam on the Tigris River and a military base in an offensive that began at the weekend and would continue.
Kurdish officials say their forces still control the dam, Iraq's biggest.
The Islamic State poses the biggest threat to Iraq's integrity since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Its fighters and their Sunni allies also control a big chunk of western Iraq.
Militant gains have prompted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, to order his airforce to help the Kurds, whose reputation as fearsome warriors was called into question by their defeat.
REUTERS