A man wearing a suicide belt walked into an Iraqi soccer stadium Friday and blew himself up -- killing at least 25 people and wounding 90 more, security officials said.
A crowd had gathered for a ceremony to mark a championship for a popular local soccer team when the bomb exploded, the head of the Babil province security committee, Baydhan al Hamdani, told CNN.
The attacker struck at al-Shuhadaa stadium in the Babil province city of Iskandariya, roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Baghdad.
A video posted on YouTube and then taken down showed soccer players standing in front of a table holding trophies until an explosion occurred and the video ended. CNN could not independently authenticate the video.
ISIS claimed responsibility, according to a statement posted online by supporters.
The special representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Iraq, Jan Kubis, condemned the bombing by "Daesh," another term for ISIS.
"The evildoers are aiming their wrath at the innocent and vulnerable civilians," he said. "Today, Daesh committed yet another atrocity, targeting families who were enjoying their weekend attending a football game in their hometown. This abhorrent act deserves the strongest condemnation."
Kubis urged Iraqis to unite to thwart the terrorists' goals of inciting sectarian tensions in the country.
The Sunni Islamist extremist group has boasted about terrorist attacks around the world, most recently this week's carnage in Brussels that killed 31 people and wounded more than 300.
The bulk of ISIS' brutal actions -- not to mention the vast majority of its active members -- are in the Middle East. It spawned in the mid-2000s from al Qaeda in Iraq, and it has captured large swaths of territory in both Iraq and neighboring Syria in recent years.
