Suicide car bomb attack kills over 100 in Iraq town
Body parts of Shia Muslims out for Eid shopping were scattered all over
BAGHDAD: An attack by the Islamic State group on a crowded marketplace in Iraq’s eastern Diyala province has killed 115 people, including women and children, in one of the deadliest single attacks in the country in the past decade.
The mostly-Shia victims were gathered to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramzan, which ended on Friday for Iraqi Shias and a day earlier for Iraqi Sunni Muslims.
Police said a small truck detonated in a crowded marketplace in the town of Khan Beni Saad on Friday night in what quickly turned celebrations into a scene of horror, with body parts scattered across the market. At least 170 people were injured in the attack, police officials said.
Men quickly emptied boxes of tomatoes to use them for carrying the bodies of small children, witnesses said, while adult victims lay scattered around the attack scene waiting for medical assistance.
“Khan Beni Saad has become a disaster area because of this huge explosion,” Diyala resident Sayif Ali said. “This is the first day of Eid, hundreds of people got killed, many injured, and we are still searching for more bodies.”
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on Twitter accounts associated with the militant group.
Iraq’s speaker of parliament, Salim al-Jabouri, said on Saturday that the attack has struck an ‘ugly sectarian chord’, and added that government is making ‘attempts to regulate Daesh’s terror from destabilising Diyala security,’ referring to the militant group by its Arabic acronym.
But anger is rife in the volatile province, where a number of towns were captured by the Islamic State group last year. Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters have since retaken those areas, but clashes between the militants and security forces continue.
“We went to the market for shopping and preparations for Eid. But this joy has turned to grief and we have lost family, friends and relatives,” said another resident.
Security forces were out in full force across Diyala on Saturday, with dozens of new checkpoints and security protocols immediately implemented in the wake of Friday’s attack.