Javier Tebas Medrano, the president of Spain’s La Liga, said: “Terrorism has attacked football. This is a awful tragedy”. As the police started to pursue the attackers, they detonated suicide belts, authorities said.
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Real Madrid’s players expressed their sorrow over the tragic news.
Another gunman was reportedly seized by residents in the area and burned alive and hung upside from a post ouside the cafe after he confessed to participating in the attacks. In March, a suicide bomber attacked a soccer stadium in Iskandriyah, southern Baghdad, killing at least 26 people and wounding 71.
A 22-year-old victim named Tahseen told a doctor he had been smoking a water pipe when a man wearing civilian clothes and a bandolier filled with ammunition crossed the street towards the al-Furat Café. The attackers fled the scene and were pursued by militiamen; one of them later blew himself up after being cornered, killing four of the militiamen. They said they hadburned him alive after he confessed.
While ISIS has suffered a number of territorial defeats in the past year, the militants are still capable of launching significant attacks across the country, and have recently stepped-up assaults inside Baghdad, something officials say is an attempt to distract from their recent battlefield defeats.
Protesters hold national flags as they chant anti-government slogans during a demonstration against the security forces’ failure to protect them from auto bombs at the site of yesterday’s vehicle bomb attack in the Iraqi capital’s eastern district of Sadr City, Iraq, Thursday, May 12, 2016.
It is thought about 50 fans of the Spanish team were at the premises in Balad, a town 50 miles north of Baghdad, to meet for coffee and watch re-runs of the side’s previous matches.
Islamic State later claimed responsibility, while gruesome pictures and video emerged showing the aftermath of the bloodbath.
The attack came after two days of bombings in Baghdad that killed almost 100 people – attacks that have been claimed by ISIL. They are the latest deadly attacks claimed by ISIS in the country.
Three attacks in Baghdad on Wednesday left more than 90 people dead and 165 wounded.
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On Friday, Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the wave of attacks and said the government is ultimately responsible for such security breaches, following protests in Baghdad’s Sadr City district and calls for the defence secretary and Prime Minister to resign.
