Iraq Mourns After Weekend Bombing Deathtoll Rises Above 200 People

The deathtoll from a massive truck bomb detonated in a Baghdad shopping district over the weekend has climbed to over 200 people, with hundreds more injured and scores still missing, making it one of the deadliest such attacks in the recent history of war-torn Iraq.

According to Reuters:

Subsequently other outlets, including CNN, raised the number of people killed to 200.

Many of the victims, reports Al-Jazeera, were women and children. Dozens burned to death or suffocated, the news outlet reported, citing a police source.

In a statement, the self-identified Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack and said it specifically targeted the Shia Muslim community. In addition to the larger truck bomb in the area, a separate bombing claimed the lives of at least two people in a northern Shi’ite section of Baghdad.

As Martin Churlov reports for the Guardian, the group’s statement on the bombings implied it “drew no distinction between civilians and security forces with whom it is battling to retain control of more than a third of the country that it overran in mid-2014, in a rampage that threatened Iraq’s ongoing viability.”

The large-scale attack occurs in the wake of ISIS’s forced retreat from the western city of Fallujah last month, the result of a massive offensive carried out mostly by Shia militias backed by Iraqi Army forces and U.S. coalition air support.

In New York Times reporting on Monday, intelligence and law enforcement officials warned that the weekend bombings, coupled with recent overseas attacks and increased threats, can be seen “as proof that the Islamic State, the only terrorist group to create a state with borders, is becoming a larger, more sophisticated version of its stateless chief rival, Al Qaeda, as it loses territory under traditional military attack in Iraq and Syria.”

Despite indications the fierce military campaign against ISIS in both Syria and Iraq is eroding the overall territory the group controls, those losses have corresponded with mass-casualty attacks by the group (or affiliates claiming allegiance to it) against civilian targets beyond the battlefield.