Iraq arrests ISIS mastermind of deadly 2016 Karradah bombing

Hundreds were killed when a truck bomb exploded outside Baghdad's Hadi shopping centre, setting it ablaze

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  People gather at the site of the suicide car bomb in the Karrada shopping area, in Baghdad. All photos: Reuters

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  Firemen hose down a burning building after the bomb attack.

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  Firemen inspect the site of the suicide bomb.

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  Firemen rest at the site.

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  Firemen inspect the site of the suicide bomb in the Karrada shopping area.

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  People at the site of the attack.

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  People gather at the bomb site.

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  People inspect the site.

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  Mourners at a funeral for one of the victims of the suicide bombing.

Iraq on Monday said it has detained the ISIS mastermind behind the deadly attack on a Baghdad shopping centre in 2016, which killed at least 300 people and wounded hundreds of others.

The suicide truck bombing in the central Karradah district was the deadliest attack by a single bomber in the Iraqi capital after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Two Iraqi intelligence officials said the Iraqi man identified as Ghazwan Al Zobai was detained during a complex operation that was carried out with the co-operation of a neighbouring country they did not name. He had been tracked by authorities for months.

They told the Associated Press that Al Zobai was detained abroad and transported to Iraq two days ago. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak of the operation on the record.

The 29-year-old Al Zobai was an Al Qaeda militant when he was imprisoned by the Americans in Iraq at Cropper prison until 2008, and then escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in 2013. He joined ISIS after that.

The officials said Al Zobai plotted many attacks in Iraq, the most notorious of which was the 2016 bombing in Karrada in 2016. He operated under the alias Abu Obaida.

The bombing in 2016 was the deadliest carried out by a single attacker after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. AP

At least 292 people died in the bombing, most of them from an ensuing fire that turned the Hadi shopping centre into an inferno. The blaze was fed by a tinderbox of shops filled with clothing and oil-based perfumes for sale, and lined with flammable panels.

Al Zobai’s arrest came in the second such operation conducted by the Iraqi National Intelligence Service since Iraq’s federal elections on October 10.

Iraqi officials said they captured Sami Jasim, an ISIS financier, last Monday, in a similar operation abroad.

Jasim had a $5 million bounty on his head from the US State Department’s Rewards for Justice programme, which describes him as having been “instrumental in managing finances for ISIS terrorist operations”.