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Baghdad: nearly 30 dead in a double suicide bombing

Almost 30 people were killed Thursday in a double suicide bombing in Baghdad. The attack took place in a market in the capital. A man first set off his explosive belt amidst vendors and onlookers. While a crowd was forming to try to come to the aid of the victims, a second suicide bomber detonated his explosives, explained the Ministry of the Interior. The latest report communicated to Agence France-Presse reports 28 dead and 73 injured.

Doctors say they are overwhelmed in the metropolis of ten million inhabitants where the Ministry of Health has announced that it has placed all medical staff on high alert. On Tayaran Square, a busy crossroads in Baghdad, puddles of blood were visible, as were shreds of clothing torn by the explosions, noted a photographer from Agence France-Presse. Soldiers and paramedics were deployed en masse on the square, the first blocking access and the second busy moving bodies or helping the wounded, in a ballet of ambulances with heady sirens.

A market already bereaved three years ago

An attack with exactly the same modus operandi had already struck this same place, killing 31 people three years ago almost to the day. As in 2018, this new attack comes as the authorities are discussing the organization of a legislative election, a deadline regularly accompanied by violence in Iraq. Early elections for a new parliament had been promised by the government for June. But the authorities are currently proposing to postpone them until October in order to give the Electoral Commission more time to organize the poll.

However, many politicians say they doubt the holding of an early election because the sine qua non is a dissolution of Parliament. However, only deputies can vote their own dissolution and none has given any assurance in this regard. Thursday’s double suicide bombing was not immediately claimed, but this modus operandi has been used in the past by the Islamic State (IS) group, which occupied nearly a third of Iraq in 2014 before. Baghdad declares that it won its war against the jihadists at the end of 2017.

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