Conflicts & War

4 Die in blast in Iraq’s capital

Baghdad, Apr 15 (EFE).- An explosion Thursday at a busy market in Baghdad’s Sadr City district left four people dead and 20 others wounded, a police source told Efe, while the Iraqi government said that just one person was killed.

Four vehicles were destroyed in the blast, which also caused damage to nearby buildings, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The explosion on the third day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan appeared occurred as the market was crowded with people shopping for the evening meal that breaks the fast observed by the devout during daylight hours.

No group has claimed responsibility.

A suicide bombing at a Sadr City market during Ramadan 2019 resulted in eight deaths.

The district, most of whose roughly 1 million residents are Shiites, is known as Sadr City after Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, a Shia cleric and prominent opponent of Saddam Hussein who was assassinated in 1999.

Sadr City is now a bastion of the movement led by Sadeq’s son, Muqtada al-Sadr, who organized armed resistance to the 2003-2011 occupation of Iraq by the United States.

The Sadrist militias were later part of the broad Iraqi and international coalition – including US forces – that ultimately drove the Islamic State (ISIS) from Iraq in 2017.

But the defeat of ISIS has not put an end to attacks by Sunni Muslim militants on members of Iraq’ Shiite majority.

Ramadan is often bloody in Iraq post-2003. In 2016, the final day of the holy month was marred by the deaths of nearly 300 people in an ISIS attack on the Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Al Karrada. EFE

nr-ah-fc/dr

Related Articles

Back to top button