IS claims responsibility for Baghdad mall attack

ISIL has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“Organized gangs were behind the attack seeking to inflame sectarian tensions”, he said. The vehicle bomb blast went off in the predominately Shi’ite district of Baghdad Jadida, according to police and medical sources. A gun battle lasted for roughly two hours, officials said.

Islamic State claimed the attack saying that it targeted “rejectionist” – a derogatory term the group uses to describe Shia Muslims, and said that there was “worse to come”.

Major General Abdul Amir al-Shimary, commander of Baghdad Operations Command, stated that the night attack was carried out by two suicide bombers who stormed the mall constructing after a automotive bomb explosion on the entrance of the purchasing centre. Iraqi officials say the attack was carried out by seven men. The conflicting accounts could not immediately be reconciled.

The officials estimated that 50 to 75 people were trapped in the Jawaher mall in Baghdad’s Jadida district. In a social media post, the group said four militants had been involved and claimed that they had killed or wounded almost 90 people, according to a translation distributed by SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadist communications.

Gunmen shot dead two Iraqi television journalists north of Baghdad on Tuesday who had been on a reporting trip with a top security officer, the channel said.

After the attack, authorities shut down the city’s highly fortified Green Zone, home to a number of foreign embassies and most of the country’s political elite.

Earlier, an Interior Ministry source had said that the attackers entered the shopping center and held a number of civilians as hostages, leaving at least seven people were killed, whilst 20 others were injured during the attack.

The prime minister wrote on his Twitter account that the attack was a “desperate attempt” by Daesh militants, after they lost control over the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, which had been occupied by the group since May. Northeast of the capital in the town of Muqdadiyah, 42 people were killed in a twin suicide bombing at a cafe.