The Baghdad bombings demonstrated the extremists’ ability to mount significant attacks despite major battlefield losses, including the city of Fallujah, which was declared “fully liberated” from IS just over a week ago.
The deadliest attack took place in the central Karrada district of Baghdad, where a suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laded pickup truck outside a crowded shopping centre.
The suicide bomber struck shortly after midnight, when families and young people were out on the streets after breaking their daylight fast for the holy month of Ramzan. Most of the victims were inside a multi-story shopping and amusement mall, where dozens burned to death or suffocated, officials said.
Like an earthquake “It was like an earthquake,” said Karim Sami, a 35-year-old street vendor. “I wrapped up my goods and was heading home when I saw a fire ball with a thunderous bombing. I was so scared to go back and started to make phone calls to my friends, but none answered,” he added.
Within hours, IS claimed responsibility for the bombing in a statement posted online, saying they had deliberately targeted Shia Muslims. In the second attack, an improvised explosive device went off in Baghdad’s northern Shaab area, another police officer said. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of IS militants who often target commercial districts and Shia areas.
Until the government launched its Fallujah operation, the Prime Minister had faced growing social unrest and anti-government protests sparked, in part, by popular anger at the lack of security in the capital. In one month, Baghdad’s highly-fortified Green Zone which houses government buildings and diplomatic missions was stormed twice by anti-government protesters.
In Karrada, civilians expressed their frustration at the government’s failure to secure the capital. “We are in a state of war, and these places are targeted. The security can’t focus on the war [against IS] and forget Baghdad,” Sami, the street vendor, said. The UN envoy for Iraq, Jan Kubis, described the Karrada attack as “a cowardly and heinous act of unparalleled proportions”. IS still controls Iraq’s second largest city of Mosul as well as significant patches of territory in north and west.
