Baghdad // A suicide attack claimed by ISIL killed at least 78 people in Baghdad when a car bomb ripped through a busy shopping district early Sunday, in the deadliest single attack in the capital this year.
The blast, which also wounded more than 130 people, struck the street in the Karada area as families and young people were out shopping after breaking their daylight fast for the holy month of Ramadan.
Interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan said the killer had planted a car bomb near a restaurant.
Iraq’s prime minister Haider Al Abadi toured the site of a blast on Sunday morning hours after the bomb attack.
Video footage uploaded to social media showed an angry crowd at the blast site, with people shouting at the convoy and calling Mr Al Abadi a “thief”.
Shortly after the first bomb, an improvised explosive device went off in eastern Baghdad, killing 5 people and wounding 16. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the second bombing.
ISIL issued a statement claiming the Karada attack, saying it was carried out by an Iraqi as part of the group’s “continuing security operations”.
The extremist group said the bombing targeted members of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority, whom it considers heretics and frequently attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere.
At dawn on Sunday, fire fighters were still working to extinguish fires at the Karada blast site and bodies were still being recovered from charred buildings.
Many of the dead were children, according to witnesses at the scene. Ambulances could be heard rushing to the site for hours following the blast. A witness said the explosion caused fires at nearby clothing and cell phone shops.
The Baghdad attacks come just over a week after Iraqi forces declared the city of Fallujah “fully liberated” from ISIL.
Over the past year, Iraqi forces have racked up territorial gains against ISIL, retaking the city of Ramadi and the towns of Hit and Rutba — all in Iraq’s vast Anbar province west of Baghdad.
Despite the government’s battlefield victories, ISIL has repeatedly shown it remains capable of launching attacks far from the front-lines.
With Fallujah retaken by the government, the second city Mosul is the only major Iraqi population centre still held by ISIL.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
