Baghdad returns to terror.
At least 28 people were killed and 70 others injured Thursday when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in Tayaran Square in a market in the center of the capital.
Baghdad had not experienced such an act of violence for three years when an attack killed 31 people in the same place.
It has not yet been claimed, but everything suggests that it is the work of Daesh jihadists, experienced in the operating mode of the almost simultaneous double attack.
A first suicide bomber, who allegedly pretended to be sick to attract the crowd around him, first set off his explosive belt among vendors and onlookers at this clothing market, located at a busy crossroads.
Then, as a crowd was forming to come to the aid of the victims, a second suicide bomber detonated his explosives.
Hence this very heavy toll in a city where hospitals are already saturated with people affected by Covid.
All medical personnel were put on alert after the attack.
On social media, we see puddles of blood, shreds of clothing torn apart by the explosions, while soldiers and paramedics were deployed en masse on Tayaran Square, the first blocking access and the second busy moving bodies or to help the wounded, in a ballet of ambulances with heady sirens, according to the AFP photographer on the spot.
The security situation in Baghdad was very good (...) There are hardly any security walls or roadblocks anymore, and people were talking a lot more about the local political situation than about security.
Pierre Fournol, lawyer specializing in Iraq, back from Baghdad
Chance of the calendar?
This attack comes the day after the inauguration of Joe Biden when the United States began, under Donald Trump, a withdrawal of its troops from Iraq, now limited to 2,500 men, but who remain engaged in the war against Daesh .
If the Islamic State Organization was defeated territorially at the end of 2017, jihadist cells are holed up in certain mountainous regions of Iraq and across the desert.
In recent years, they have only claimed responsibility for small-scale attacks, usually carried out at night against military positions in isolated areas, far from cities.
"
The security situation in Baghdad was very good,"
says
Figaro
Pierre Fournol
,
lawyer specializing in Iraq, who is returning from the Iraqi capital.
I found it much better than on my last visit in 2019. There are hardly any security walls or roadblocks, and people were talking a lot more about the local political situation than about security,
”he adds. -he.
The double attack on Thursday - if it was committed by Daesh - shows the resilience of a terrorist organization, which still has thousands of fighters scattered between Iraq and Syria.
Even if the level of the threat is infinitely lower than that of the years 2014-2015, Daesh remains capable of penetrating in the heart of Baghdad to perpetrate a terrorist act.
Start of election period
This attack also occurs as Iraq enters an electoral period, generally conducive to an outbreak of violence in this country still fragmented between communities, which also has a government powerless in the face of the actions of pro-Iranian Shiite militias. .
Early legislative elections were due to take place in June, but they were, a priori, postponed until October, the authorities wanting to give more time to the Electoral Commission to organize the poll.
Many observers doubt, however, whether a snap election will be held - in June as well as in October - 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.
