SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Kurdistan Region’s counter-terrorism directorate said on Sunday it had arrested a man suspected of involvement in the planning of the current suicide bombing in Baghdad.
A suicide bomber killed 30 people and injured more than 50 others in a crowded market in Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad on Monday, the eve of Eid al-Adha.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the group’s Nasheer news agency said on Telegram. It said one of its militants blew up his explosive vest among the crowds.
In a statement, the directorate of counter-terrorism said the federal government’s security institutions had requested assistance from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to detain suspects with links to the explosion.
“They sent us the name of a wanted person who was in contact with the group that carried out the terrorist act,” the Kurdish counter-terrorism service added.
“After investigations by the general directorate of counter-terrorism, the wanted person was found and detained,” it stated.
The suspect who is from Hawija district of Kirkuk province lived in Hassan Sham camp, according to the directorate.
On Saturday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced the arrest of a “terror cell” behind the market bombing.
“We have arrested all the members of the cowardly terrorist cell that planned and perpetrated the attack,” Kadhimi said on Twitter, “and they will be put before a judge today.”
It was the third time an explosion has hit Sadr, the mainly Shia Muslim neighborhood of Baghdad, in recent months, with the last one in June wounding 11 people.
In April, the Sunni Muslim militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a market in Sadr City, Baghdad’s main Shi’ite Muslim neighborhood, that killed four people and wounded 20.
Islamic State also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack last January that killed more than 30 in the crowded Tayaran Square market in central Baghdad – Iraq’s first big suicide bombing for three years.
