Three suicide bombings claimed by ISIS across Baghdad killed at least 94 people on Wednesday, the Iraqi police and hospital sources said, in the deadliest attacks in the Iraqi capital in 2016.
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In statements circulated online by supporters it said that a vehicle bomb had aimed at Shi’ite militia fighters gathered in the area and two fighters wearing explosive vests targeted security forces in the later attacks.
The bomb was set off in a crowded outdoor market of Baghdad’s majority-Shi’ite eastern district of Sadr City, police officials said.
After the attacks, grieving relatives and family members lit candles at the scene of Sadr City bombing as calls came from mosques in Baghdad for blood donations.
Karim Salih, a 45-year-old grocer, said the bomb was a pickup truck loaded with fruits and vegetables that was parked there by a man who left it and disappeared among the crowds of people.
Support for al-Sadr runs deep in Sadr City, a vast Shiite working class neighborhood named for his family, which has seen the deadliest bombings this year.
Later that day, a suicide bomber detonated in a busy square in the Shiite neighborhood of al-Kadhimiya in Baghdad, killing 17 people, police officials said.
Elsewhere in Iraq’s western Anbar province, on the outskirts of the town of al-Baghdadi, at least 15 Iraqi soldiers were killed and more than 40 wounded in another ISIL suicide attack. The attack also wounded 34.
Officials say the increase in attacks in Iraq’s capital is an attempt by ISIS to distract from their battlefield losses. Numerous victims were women, including several brides who appeared to be getting ready for their weddings, the sources said.
In the past two weeks, ISIL has claimed responsibility for two attacks First, a auto bomb, targeting an open-air market which killed at least 23 people and injured 38 in order to target the Shia community in and around Baghdad.
The Iraqi government estimates that IS only controls around 14 percent of the country, but the extremists still hold Mosul, the country’s second-largest city, and Fallujah, a city just west of Baghdad.
But the jihadists still control significant territory in western Iraq, and are able to carry out frequent bombings in government-held areas. That battle has stalled for several months as Iraqi security forces have tried to avoid killing civilians. It has said it draws no distinction between them and security forces.
Security forces are now engaged in large-scale military operations in the provinces of Anbar and Nineveh as they close in on Fallujah and Mosul, IS’s two major remaining hubs in Iraq.
The blast comes as the government is locked in a political crisis that some have warned could undermine the fight against IS.
On April 30, hundreds of al-Sadr’s supporters stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad and broke into the parliament building.
Protesters returned to the streets of Sadr City on Thursday, with many blaming the attacks the day before on the government.
“Parliament is divided in three groups”.
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“If they can’t protect us, then they have to let us do the job”, he added.
