Twin Baghdad blasts leave at least 32 dead
BAGHDAD: A twin suicide bombing killed 32 in central Baghdad on Thursday, Iraq’s health ministry said, the deadliest attack in the city in three years.
At least 32 people were killed and another 110 wounded in the attack on a huge open-air market for second-hand clothes in the Iraqi capital’s Tayaran Square.
The market had been teeming with people following nearly a year of restrictions imposed across the country in a bid to halt the spread of Covid-19.
According to an interior ministry statement, the first suicide bomber rushed into the market, claiming to feel sick. Once a crowd of people had gathered around him, he detonated his explosives. As people then flocked around the victims, a second attacker detonated his bomb, the ministry said.
An AFP photographer at the scene said security forces had cordoned off the area, where blood-stained clothes were strewn about the muddy streets.
Paramedics were working to remove casualties, and Iraq’s health ministry said it had mobilised medics across the capital. Thursday’s attack was the bloodiest incident in Baghdad since January 2018, when a suicide bomber also in Tayaran Square killed more than 30 people. Suicide bombings had been commonplace in Baghdad during the sectarian blood-letting that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.
Later on, as the Islamic State group swept across much of Iraq, its jihadists also targeted the capital. But with the group’s territorial defeat in late 2017, suicide bombings in the city became rare. Baghdad’s notorious concrete blast walls were dismantled and checkpoints across the city removed.
Thursday’s attack comes as Iraqis prepare for an election, events which are often preceded by bombings and assassinations.
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi had originally set this year’s general election for June.
But authorities are in talks over rescheduling them to October in order to give electoral authorities more time to register voters and new parties.
Thursday’s twin attack was not immediately claimed but suicide bombings have been used by ultra-conservative Islamist groups, most recently IS.