Over 30 dead, dozens injured in Baghdad twin suicide bombing

A twin suicide bombing killed at least 32 people and wounded more than 100 in a Baghdad market on Thursday in the first such attack in years, security and medical sources said.

The market had been teeming with people following nearly a year of restrictions imposed across the country in a bid to halt the spread of COVID-19 pandemic.

According to an interior ministry statement, the first suicide bomber rushed into the market, claiming to feel sick.

Once a crowd of people had gathered around him, he detonated his explosives.

As people then flocked around the victims, a second attacker detonated his bomb, the ministry said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Suicide bombings have been rare in the Iraqi capital since the defeat of the Daesh [ISIS] terror group in 2017. The last took place in January 2018.
Paramedics were working to remove casualties, and Iraq's health ministry said it had mobilised medics across the capital.

Thursday's attack was the bloodiest incident in Baghdad since January 2018, when a suicide bomber also in Tayaran Square killed dozens of people.

Suicide bombings had been commonplace in Baghdad during the sectarian bloodletting that followed the US-led invasion of 2003.

Baghdad has witnessed almost no such attacks since Iraqi forces and a U.S.-backed coalition drove the Daesh [ISIS] militant group from territory it controlled in Iraq in 2017.
The last deadly suicide blast in the Iraqi capital took place in January 2018, also at Tayaran Square, killing at least 27 people.