The market is one of the main four outdoor shopping venues in Sadr City, a sprawling slum that is home to about 2.5 million residents – nearly half of Baghdad’s population of around 6 million.
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At least 64 people were killed when a auto bomb went off at a market in Baghdad, according to Iraqi police.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to a message on the Twitter account for Amaq, a media outlet linked to the group.
The largest attack was a vehicle bomb that blew up in a commercial section of Sadr City, a mostly Shiite area. It said they were carried out by suicide bombers, for whom they each provided a nom de guerre.
The Islamic State (IS) issued an online statement claiming responsibility for all three attacks.
Both police officers and civilians were among the at least 17 people who died and 43 who were injured, officials said. The AP could not immediately verify the authenticity of the claim but it appeared on a website commonly used by the Sunni militants.
The death toll made Wednesday’s three suicide bombings at a busy market and two checkpoints the bloodiest day in Baghdad so far this year.
The checkpoint attacks later in the day occurred minutes apart and killed at least 26 people, Alison tells our Newscast unit.
Hundreds of demonstrators protested in the poor district on Thursday, carrying placards denouncing Abadi, his predecessor Nuri al-Maliki and other top political figures, arguing that the entrenched political class had left them undefended.
Our correspondent says the bombings come in the midst of an acute political crisis in Baghdad, with parliament unable to meet and the government effectively paralysed by factional disputes.
A spokesman said on Wednesday IS had lost two-thirds of the territory seized by the militants in 2014. An additional 87 people were wounded in the attack in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City.
The attacks were condemned by the Iraq government and United Nations.
“They protect and fortify the Green Zone but not their own sons”, he said, of the heavily-secured sector on the banks of the Tigris that Iraq’s government inherited from occupying USA forces.
The market attacked in the first bombing Wednesday is a base of support for al-Sadr. The neighborhood is named after his father.
Several cars and nearby buildings were badly damaged, officials said.
After the explosion in Sadr City on Wednesday, protesters gathered there, chanting that they would not back down from their demands for change.
The lack of security means that “the people who are demanding their rights are paying, the people who are demanding their freedom are paying”, said Ghalib al-Zamili, a provincial councilman whose brother is a commander in the Peace Brigades, al-Sadr’s followers. “People are angry and upset”.
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Even now, despite the Islamic State’s degraded capability, the key city of Mosul remains under its control two years after it was overrun by the group.
