Iraq: double suicide bombing in central Baghdad kills many
A suicide bomber blew himself up in central Baghdad on Thursday.
The attack took place at a second-hand clothing market in Tayaran Square, a busy crossroads in the Iraqi capital.
REUTERS - THAIER AL-SUDANI
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
A suicide bomber blew himself up in central Baghdad on Thursday.
At least 20 people have been killed and around 40 injured, an Interior Ministry official said, a type of attack that had not taken place for more than 18 months in the region. capital city.
Publicity
Read more
A first man set off his explosive belt right in the middle of the second-hand clothing market in al-Tayaran Square, a busy crossroads in Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.
While a crowd formed to try to come to the aid of the victims, a second suicide bomber detonated his explosives.
The city center was immediately cordoned off, reports our correspondent in Baghdad,
Lucile Wasserman
.
A suicide attack on the same square left 31 dead
three years ago
almost to the day.
As in 2018, this attack comes as the authorities are discussing the organization of a legislative election, a deadline regularly accompanied by violence in Iraq.
An attack not yet claimed
Immediately after the explosion, heard throughout the center of Baghdad, AFP journalists saw numerous ambulances pouring in to the site of the attack.
Soldiers and paramedics were deployed en masse on the square, the first blocking access and the second busy moving bodies or helping the wounded, noted an AFP photographer in the square.
The army and state television reported the attack, saying there were "
civilian deaths and injuries
."
The attack was not immediately claimed, but this modus operandi has been used in the past by the Islamic State (IS) group, which occupied nearly a third of Iraq in 2014 before Baghdad declares to have won his war against the jihadists at the end of 2017.
Since then, jihadist cells have been hiding in the many mountainous and desert areas of the country.
So far, however, ISIS has only claimed responsibility for small-scale attacks, usually carried out at night against military positions in isolated areas far from towns.
The last attacks that killed several people in Baghdad date back to June 2019.
(and with
AFP
)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Iraq
Terrorism
On the same subject
Iraq: 17 jihadists arrested in Baghdad
Geopolitics, the debate
The Arab Spring, ten years later: is it time for a final assessment?