A twin suicide bombing in Baghdad’s Tayaran square, which was packed with people shopping, left two dozen dead on Thursday afternoon. It is the most deadly attack in more than 18 months, reports said. It is a reminder of the dark days in Iraq when suicide bombings like this were routine. The rise of Islamic State led to numerous attacks like this. It is not known if this attack was an ISIS attack, but it has the hallmarks of this type of attack.
The bombing was only four kilometers from the US embassy compound and occurred in an area where there have been protests over the last year and a half. During the mass protests in the fall of 2019 protesters often laid siege to security forces on Al Jumhuriya bridge, not far from the market where the bombings took place.
Local journalists said there were two bombings and video online appeared to capture the second one. Reports said suicide bombers were the perpetrators. Up to 100 may be wounded. Reports gave the location as near the “Bab al-Sharqi” area of central Baghdad. At the same time there are rising threats and low level attacks on convoys that supply the US in Iraq. Last year there were dozens of attacks using 107mm rockets on the US embassy compound and US forces in Iraq.
The US has drawn down most of its troops to only several thousand personnel and it has moved many of them to the autonomous Kurdistan region which is more sympathetic to the US. In other areas of Iraq the pro-Iranian militias of the Popular Mobilization Units run checkpoints and have threatened the US. These groups include the Badr Organization, Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba. The day before the attack in Baghdad there were reports of an attack on a convoy carrying equipment to the US-led anti-ISIS Coalition. READ MORE
