Iraq has executed three people convicted in a 2016 bombing case involving the ISIL (ISIS) armed group that killed hundreds of people.
According to international media reports, the office of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said on Monday that the hangings were carried out on Sunday night and Monday morning, but did not name those executed or provide details about when they were sentenced.
The attack took place early on July 3, 2016, in Baghdad’s Karrada shopping area when it was filled with people in advance of the Eid al-Fitr festival at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The car bomb killed a limited number of people, officials said at the time, but it caused flames that spread and trapped people inside shopping centres that lacked emergency exits.
By the time the fire was put out, 323 people had died, making it one of the deadliest attacks to ever hit Iraq and one of the world’s deadliest attacks since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Police Major-General Talib Khalil Rahi said at the time that the bomber’s minibus had been loaded with plastic explosives and ammonium nitrate. Some of the dead could not be identified due to the intensity of the raging fires.
Al-Sudani’s office said in its statement that the prime minister met the victims’ families following the hangings and informed them that “the rightful punishment of death sentence was carried out against three key criminals found guilty of their involvement in the terrorist bombing”.
