Ice cream shop defies Isil days after Baghdad car bomb

A BAGHDAD ice-cream parlour that was bombed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) has reopened just five days after it was attacked.

Al-faqma, in the city’s southern Karrada neighbourhood, was hit by a car bomb that killed at least 16 as families broke their Ramadan fast last Tuesday.

However, in a message posted on Facebook, the parlour has announced that it has reopened for business. “We have been working through the night and the day to reopen the shop and to defy terrorism,” the message read.

“Life has to continue, we have to face terrorism, and work must continue.”

Photographs showed families and young people sharing ice cream on benches outside the shop – a place that days before had been littered with dead bodies and consumed by fire.

One of the dead in the attack was a 12-year-old girl from Melbourne, Australia, who had been visiting her family in Baghdad. She was named as Zynab al-harbiya.

Isil claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying that it had targeted “gatherings of Shia” in Karrada.

It is not the first time that the organisation has targeted civilians in the area during Ramadan because of their faith. On July 3 2016, a suicide bomber killed more than 300 people by detonating a van full of explosives on the main street.

The owners of the parlour finished their Facebook post by saying that they had distributed free ice cream in memory of the dead. “God willing, the injured will be healthy soon.”