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Isis bombing leaves scores dead at market in Baghdad Isis bombing leaves scores dead at market in Baghdad
(about 2 hours later)
At least 76 people were killed and 200 wounded in a blast on Thursday at a market in Baghdad’s Sadr City district claimed by Islamic State. The Islamic State terror group has claimed responsibility for a bomb blast that killed at least 80 people in a Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad in the deadliest attack in the Iraqi capital this year.
The bombing was one of the largest attacks on the capital since Haider al-Abadi became prime minister a year ago. The bomb was placed in a refrigerated lorry and driven to the heart of a farmers’ market in Sadr City in the early hours of Thursday morning. A witness told the Guardian that the bomber had beckoned people to the truck by telling them he had cheap tomatoes to sell.
In a statement posted online, Isis said it had targeted the army and militia fighters in the Shia neighbourhood. The group, which seized swaths of northern and western Iraq last year, regularly sends bombers into the capital. Hospitals in Baghdad said at least 200 people had been injured in the blast. The marketplace in the Jamila district of Sadr City – an impoverished quarter of north-eastern Baghdad – had been bustling with buyers ahead of the weekend.
“A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up inside Jamila market at around 6am,” police officer Muhsin al-Saedi said. “Many people were killed and body parts were thrown on top of nearby buildings.“ A website post purported to be by Isis said the attack had killed “charlatans” in the Shia community and members of the Iraqi security forces.
The market in the north-eastern suburb is one of the biggest in Baghdad selling wholesale food items. A witness told Reuters they saw fruit and vegetables mixed with shrapnel littering the blood-soaked blast crater. Shia communities have been constant targets of attacks by the Sunni extremists throughout the past decade of instability in Iraq. However, this year Isis has placed extra emphasis on trying to strike inside Baghdad, which has, by and large, been quarantined from the chaos that has enveloped other areas of the north and west of the country.
Smoke rose from charcoaled bits of debris. Rescuers pulling bodies from the rubble waded through sheet metal that had formed the walls and roofs of vendors’ stands. The size of the bomb and the success its planners had in moving it into the heart of a densely populated area showed yet again the ease with which Baghdad’s security cordon can be breached. Iraqi security officers are still using fraudulent bomb detection wands sold to senior officials eight years ago by a British manufacturer whose owners have received lengthy jail terms in the UK.
Angry people gathered at the site of the explosion, some crying and shouting the names of their missing relatives and others cursing the government. Aside from those devices, which are used at numerous checkpoints, security officials can do little to detect a car or lorry bomb once it is on the move.
“We hold the government responsible, fully responsible,” said one witness, Ahmed Ali Ahmed, calling on the authorities to dispatch the army and Shia militias to man checkpoints in the capital. Ali, 28, a merchant from Jamila said: “The explosion happened in the morning around 8.30am inside Jamila market. It was a big lorry full of tomatoes and the driver was shouting in the middle of the market that he had very cheap [produce]. So people came close to him and then he blew himself up.”
Abadi took office last summer following the army’s collapse in Isis’s takeover of the northern city of Mosul that left the Baghdad government dependent on the militias – many funded and assisted by neighbouring Iran – to defend the capital and recapture lost ground. Sadr City has been the scene of regular explosions throughout the Sunni insurgency, which has used ruthless violence in a bid to strip power from the Shia majority rulers who replaced the ousted Saddam Hussein.
Security forces and militia groups are targetingIsis in Anbar province, the sprawling Sunni heartland in western Iraq, while Abadi has fixed his attention in recent days on a sweeping reform agenda aimed at the largest overhaul of the political system since the end of US military occupation. Ali blamed the explosion on government officials threatened by mooted corruption reforms and mass demonstrations for better services that are due to resume in Baghdad on Friday.
“Everytime they feel that there is a threat to their positions, we end up with a big explosion. I don’t see any difference between Isis and them. The Iraqi politicians use people like Isis to keep us quiet.
Dr Ammar al-Fayadh, the dean of Nahrain University in the capital, said Thursday’s blast, although bigger than previous attacks, did not say much about patterns of violence.
“Iraqis have gone through so much, to the level that they can’t measure anymore the scale of violence and whether the attacks are bigger or smaller than before,” he said. “They have been exposed to all sorts of violence and terror and most of them are numb.”
Additional reporting by Mais al-Baya’a