120 killed in overnight Baghdad bombings.
Nearly
120 people were killed and 200 wounded in two bombings overnight in
Baghdad, most of them in a busy shopping area as residents celebrated
Ramadan, police and medical sources said on Sunday.
The
attack on the shopping area of Karrada is the deadliest since
U.S.-backed Iraqi forces last month scored a major victory when it
dislodged Islamic State from their stronghold of Falluja, an hour's
drive west of the capital. It is also the deadliest so far this year.
Prime
Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered the offensive after a series of
bombings in Baghdad, saying Falluja served as a launchpad for such
attacks on the capital. However, bombings have continued.
A
convoy carrying Abadi who had come to tour the site of the bombings was
pelted with stones and bottles by residents, angry at what they felt
were false promises of better security.
A
refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up in the central
district of Karrada, killing 115 people and injuring at least 200.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement
circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hardline Sunni group. It
said the blast was a suicide bombing.
Karrada
was busy at the time as Iraqis eat out and shop late during the Muslim
fasting month of Ramadan, which ends next week with the Eid al-Fitr
festival.
The
White House on Sunday said the attack only strengthened the United
States' resolve to confront Islamic State. "We remain united with the
Iraqi people and government in our combined efforts to destroy ISIL,"
said the White House statement, referring to Islamic State.
Videos
posted on social media showed people running after the SUV convoy of
Abadi as he left Karrada after touring the scene, throwing pavement
stones, bottles of water, empty buckets and slippers, venting their
anger at the inability of the security forces to protect the area.
Abadi declared three
days of mourning for the victims, according to state-run media that also
cited him saying he understood the angry reaction of residents.
Reuters
TV footage taken in the morning showed at least four buildings severely
damaged or partly collapsed, including a shopping mall believed to be
the target, and gutted cars scattered all around.
The toll climbed during the day as rescuers pulled out more bodies from under the rubble and people succumbed to their injuries.
Comments
posted on social media accused security forces of continuing to use
fake bomb detectors at checkpoints filtering traffic in Baghdad, five
years after the scandal broke out about a device commonly known as the
'magic wand'.
A
police officer in Baghdad confirmed these hand-held ADE 651 detectors
were still in use. They were sold to Iraq and other nations by a British
businessman who was jailed for 10 years in 2013 in Britain for
endangering lives for profit.
In
a second attack, a roadside bomb also blew up around midnight in a
market in al-Shaab, a Shi'ite district in the north of the capital,
killing at least two people, police and medical sources said
Iraqi forces on June
26 declared the defeat of IS militants in Falluja, a bastion of Sunni
insurgency, following a month of fighting.
"It was a mistake for the government to think that the source of the bombings was restricted to just one area," he said. "There are sleeper cells that operate independently from each other."
The assault on Falluja was part of a wider offensive against Islamic State, which seized swathes of Iraqi territory in 2014.
Abadi said the next target of the Iraqi forces is Mosul, the de facto capital of the militants and the largest city under their control in both Iraq and Syria.
0 comments:
Post a Comment