Although security forces continue to fight ragtag bands of Islamic State militants in Iraq’s peripheral regions, major security incidents in the capital are rare. Thursday’s attack was the deadliest to strike the capital in years. The last mass-casualty attack, striking the same square, took place in January 2018 and killed 27 people.
Khalid al-Mahna, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the suicide bomber detonated his explosives after attracting a crowd by feigning sickness in the middle of the market.
When shoppers came to help those injured by the first blast, he said, someone else detonated a second bomb.
Thursday’s attack shattered a sense of relative security in the capital, raising questions about the Iraqi security forces’ preparedness in the face of a militant threat that has been diminished but by no means erased. Army units and special forces continue to arrest alleged Islamic State members at their homes in urban centers and say that sleeper cells remain prepared to mount strikes.