Explosion At Busy Baghdad Market Wounds 15 Iraqi Civilians
Amid soaring tensions between Washington and Iran-backed militia in Iraq, a bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market, wounding at least 15 on June 30.
The blast occurred when an explosive device was placed under a kiosk in the Maridi market area of Sadr city, a suburb in the Eastern part of the capital.
The military said that the wounded Iraqis received treatment and left the hospital.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility, the government says.
The problem is that it’s not the first blast to hit a densely populated area. In April, at least four people were killed in a car bomb attack in Sadr city.
Though large bomb attacks waned since the defeat of IS in 2017, small attacks still persist.
In January, over 30 people were killed in a twin suicide bombing in a busy commercial area in central Baghdad. It was the most deadly bombing in three years to strike Iraq’s capital, AP reported.
ISIS returns with vengeance
“ISIS is coming back with a vengeance… they are determined to make a powerful comeback,” Peshmerga General Sirwan said in an interview with Al Arabyia.
Despite being militarily defeated in 2017, ISIS is reorganizing itself, attacking densely populated areas in Iraq on a monthly basis
Some Western military officials said that there are thousands of IS fighters operating in Iraq. It is estimated that there number has reached around 10,000.
Frankly, the failure to eradicate radicalism could be attributed to internal and external factors. With regard to the internal factors, the country is grappling with economic crisis, political paralysis and power vacuum.
Add to this, there is a lack of coordination between the Kurdish forces in Erbil and the Iraqi forces in Baghdad. Though both forces cooperated to defeat IS in 2017, their relations deteriorated later on.
When it comes to the external factors, Iraq is still dominated by Iranian- backed forces. Despite the latest efforts to curb the Iranian influence in Baghdad—presented in the Iraq and Egypt summit—it’s naïve to argue that Iraq could be pushed away from Iran’s orbit of influence in the near future.
Now with the economy in shambles and the government struggling to preserve national security, ISIS is expected to be more powerful than before, endangering the lives of Iraqi civilians.