BAGHDAD — Five mortar rounds struck the Mussayib area south of Baghdad on Thursday, Feb. 20, killing 17 people, police and a doctor said.

The shelling, which hit an area of shops and restaurants that draws crowds at night, also wounded 70 people, the sources said.

A car bomb also killed one person in Mussayib on Tuesday, one of 10 such blasts to hit central Iraq that day.

Iraqi authorities are struggling to contain the worst violence to hit the country since 2008, when it was just emerging from a brutal period of sectarian killings in which tens of thousands of people died.

But despite measures including wide-ranging operations against militants, the violence has continued unabated.

More than 1,500 people have been killed in attacks and clashes so far this year, after upwards of 6,800 died in violence in 2013, according to figures based on security and medical sources.

The City of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, was captured by al-Qaeda- affiliated insurgents earlier this year.

It is the first time that militants have exercised such open control in major cities since the height of the insurgency that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.