Melbourne girl killed by the bomb she feared
A 12-YEAR-OLD Melbourne girl killed in the Islamic State bombing of a Baghdad ice cream parlour told a family member she was scared of bombs before her trip to Iraq.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop confirmed yesterday that Zynab Al Harbiya was killed in the suicide bombing on Monday night in the Iraqi capital.
Her mother and uncles were injured.
Zynab’s cousin Layla Al-Saabary told ABC News Radio: “All I know is that she was just near the ice cream parlour and the explosion was close to her so there was no chance. They just brought her body back and buried her yesterday.
“She told my son before she left, she said ‘I am scared of the bombs’ and we said it is okay.”
The young girl had travelled from her Victorian home to visit her sick grandfather.
Accompanied by family members, she had just enjoyed an ice cream, breaking the daily fast undertaken during the holy month of Ramadan, when a car bomb was detonated outside the popular eatery.
She is understood to be from Thomastown in Melbourne’s north and was in Year 7 at Sirius College in Broadmeadows.
She was among 17 people, including several children, killed when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged vehicle outside the shop about midnight. More than 30 were injured.
Videos of the attack show wounded and bloodied people crying for help on the footpath.