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Two men blew themselves up in a crowded Baghdad market on Thursday, killing at least 32 people in Iraq’s first big suicide bombing for three years, authorities said, describing it as a possible sign of the reactivation of Islamic State.
Reuters journalists arriving after the blasts saw pools of blood and discarded shoes at the site of the bombings, a clothing market in Tayaran Square in the centre of the city. Health authorities said at least 110 people had been wounded.
“One [bomber] came, fell to the ground and started complaining ‘my stomach is hurting’ and he pressed the detonator in his hand. It exploded immediately. People were torn to pieces,” said a street vendor who did not give his name.
Suicide attacks, once an almost daily occurrence in the Iraqi capital, have halted in recent years since Islamic State fighters were defeated in Iraq in 2017, part of an overall improvement in security that has brought normal life back to Baghdad.
“Daesh terrorist groups might be standing behind the attacks,” Civil Defence chief Maj Gen Kadhim Salman told reporters in relation to the latest bombings, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
Thursday’s attack took place in the same market that was struck in the last major suicide attack, in January 2018, when at least 27 people were killed.
Urgent meeting
Prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi held an urgent meeting with top security commanders to discuss Thursday’s suicide attacks, the premier’s office said in a brief statement. Iraqi security forces were deployed and key roads blocked to prevent possible further attacks.
Suicide attacks against civilian targets were a near-daily tactic of insurgents during the US occupation of Iraq after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, and were later employed by Islamic State, whose fighters swept across one-third of the country in 2014.
By 2017 the fighters had been driven from all territory they held in Iraq, although they have continued to wage a low-level insurgency against Iraqi forces and attack officials, mainly in northern areas. – Reuters