At least 28 people were killed and 68 wounded, including women and children, and dozens wounded in a triple bombing in a Baghdad market yesterday, the deadliest attack to rock the Iraqi capital in months, security officials said.
The attackers first detonated two car bombs in the Sunni district of Adhamiyah in central Baghdad, then minutes later a suicide bomber ran into the resulting melee and blew himself up among police and civilians who rushed to help the wounded, defense and interior ministry officials said.
An interior ministry official said at least 68 were wounded in the rush-hour attack, the deadliest to hit Baghdad since June 17 when 51 people were killed and 75 wounded in a car bombing in the al-Hurriya district.
Witnesses said the attack took place at about 8am on a street lined with restaurants and coffee shops popular for breakfast with Iraqi security forces, as a bus carrying young girls to school drove past.
“There was a huge explosion and before I went out to look another bomb went off,” said Fadel Hussein, a waiter at a teahouse on Kassra Street, scene of the bombings.
“Heavy smoke was everywhere. There were so many bloody victims on the ground, we helped to evacuate those people to ambulances,” Hussein said.
The US and Iraqi military cordoned off the area that was littered with glass and scorched cars as sobbing parents desperately searched for their sons and daughters.
One woman in her 40s and wearing a black abaya, the traditional black Arabic dress, sat on the ground crying uncontrollably.
“I’m waiting for my husband who is inside the area looking for my son. I hope he is still alive,” she sobbed.
Among those killed were three policemen, three women and five children, police said.
The US military said in a statement two improvised explosive devices had been detonated followed by an unknown explosion.
The Medical City hospital received 37 wounded people, including several women and children and two Iraqi soldiers, a medic said.
In another attack, in Baqubah, capital of volatile northern Diyala Province, a teenaged girl in a suicide bomb vest blew herself up at a checkpoint of US-backed security patrolmen, killing four people and wounding 18.
The attack by a female suicide bomber in Baqubah is part of a trend that has increased this year. US forces say al-Qaeda Sunni Islamist militants are increasingly recruiting female bombers — often teenaged girls — to thwart security checks.
Many of the female bombers have lost male relatives and are seen as psychologically vulnerable to recruitment for suicide missions.
Suicide attacks are usually the hallmark of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which continues to have a small presence in Baghdad despite major setbacks after repeated Iraqi and US military sweeps. Adhamiyah itself, a Sunni neighborhood tucked into the mostly Shiite eastern half of the city, saw fierce clashes at the height of Iraq’s sectarian violence but there has been a sharp reduction in attacks there over the last year.
Despite the dramatic improvement in security in large swathes of Iraq, including the capital, militants continue to launch near daily attacks, most of them targeting US and Iraqi security forces.
Baghdad has been hit by a string of bombings in the last week, most of them small roadside bombs that claimed only a handful of victims.
The US military says the capital has become much safer since the launch last year of a joint Iraqi-US security plan, averaging four attacks a day, 89 percent fewer than in 2006 and 83 percent less than last year.
The Iraqi military said the number of car bombings in Baghdad has declined sharply, falling from a total of 415 in 2006 to 61 so far this year, despite the attacks in the last week.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was