Iraqis on Monday mourned more than 200 people killed in a Baghdad suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group and accused the government of not doing enough to protect them.
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A truck packed with explosives was blown up by an ISIS suicide bomber in the busy shopping district.
Iraqi and foreign officials have linked the recent increase in IS attacks -especially large-scale suicide bombings – with the string of losses the Islamic State group has faced on the battlefields across Iraq over the past year. On the same day, another explosion in northeastern Baghdad left one civilian killed and five others wounded.
“The Iraqi community will express their sympathy by honouring the victims of this brutal attack on humanity and remembering all the innocent lives that have been lost in Iraq over the past couple of days”, spokesman Khaled Alzawada said in a statement. He said the streets were crowded because many people had gathered to watch Italy play Germany in the soccer tournament and the match had just finished.
On the same night, a roadside bomb also exploded in the popular market of al-Shaab, a Shi’ite district in north Baghdad, killing two people. “It is a reality that they retain a lethal capability, but that’s not going to deter us from trying to do everything we can to try and reduce that capability”, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Tuesday.
IS’s defeat there was compounded by a devastating series of air strikes targeting militant forces as they sought to flee the Fallujah area that officials said killed dozens and destroyed hundreds of vehicles.
Meanwhile, the top United Nations human rights official has called on Iraq to stop groups that are fighting alongside government forces against Islamic State from taking revenge on civilians and to clarify the fate of hundreds who went missing.
Responsibility for security in Baghdad is divided between the army, federal and local police.
A few minutes later, a second attack was reported in the coastal city of Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia.
Ghabban handed authority to his deputy, until Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi makes a decision on who will replace him.
The staggering figure – one the worst bombings in 13 years of war in Iraq – has cast a pall on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and which begins Wednesday in Iraq.
“Kuwait security agencies have carried out three preemptive operations in Kuwait and overseas that led to derailing a number of Islamic State plots targeting Kuwait and arresting several I.S. members”, a statement by the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry read.
“We aren’t able.to identify them, but there are clues” such as mobile telephone SIM cards, rings and clothes they were wearing, he said.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, in a statement circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hard line Sunni group.
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Retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst, said Tuesday that the fallout to the massive security lapse could also see the delay of the government’s long-awaited push to retake the ISIS stronghold of Mosul.
