Bombings kill 40 across Baghdad ahead of end to nightly curfew

Twenty-two people were killed and 45 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in the New Baghdad neighbourhood, in one of the deadliest attacks to hit the capital for months.

Iraqi shop owners clean up the site of a suicide bombing that targeted a street filled with hardware stores, in the capital's southeastern neighborhood of New Baghdad on February 7, 2015. Karim Kadim/AP PhotoShow less

BAGHDAD // At least 40 people were killed in bombings across Baghdad on Saturday, hours before a decade-old nightly curfew was due to be lifted in the city.

The deadliest bombing happened in the Iraqi capital’s New Baghdad neighbourhood, where a suicide bomber detonated his explosives in a street filled with hardware stores and a restaurant, killing 22 people and wounding at least 45, police said.

“The restaurant was full of young people, children and women when the suicide bomber blew himself up,” witness Mohamed Saeed said. “Many got killed.”

After the blast, bloody water mixed with olives and other debris from the restaurant as authorities tried to clean.

A second attack took place in central Baghdad’s popular Shorja market, where two bombs – some 25 metres apart – exploded, killing at least 11 people and wounding 26, police said. Another bombing at the Abu Cheer outdoor market in southwestern Baghdad killed at least four people and wounded 15.

In Tarmiya, a Sunni town 30 kilometres north of Baghdad, a bomb blast killed at least three soldiers in a passing convoy, authorities said.

Hospital officials confirmed the casualty figures.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks – some of the deadliest to hit the capital in months – though ISIL has launched attacks on Baghdad in the past. The extremist group now holds a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria in its self-declared Islamic caliphate.

The bombings illustrate the persistent danger of violence in Baghdad, even as Iraq prepared to lift the city's nightly midnight-to-5am curfew on Sunday. The curfew has largely been in place since 2004, as a response to the growing sectarian violence that engulfed Iraq after the US-led invasion a year earlier. It aimed to curb violence in the capital by limiting movement at night, but has failed to stop frequent bombings.

There was no immediate comment on Saturday from Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi, who announced the end of the night-time curfew on Thursday by decree. His office said the decision had been taken so there would “be normal life as much as possible, despite the existence of a state of war”.

Mr Al Abadi also ordered that streets long blocked off for security reasons reopen for traffic and pedestrians.

Iraqi officials have repeatedly said that the capital is secure, despite Sunni militant groups occasionally attacking Baghdad’s Shiite-majority neighbourhoods.

* Associated Press with additional reporting by Agence France-Presse