Alwaght- Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi fires top security officials in Baghdad as the toll of a weekend bombing nears 300 people.
A statement posted on his Facebook page said he had fired the commander of military operations, security services and intelligence in the capital.
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Mohammed Ghabban resigned blaming the attack on a lack of communication between multiple forces in charge of the capital’s security.
The bombing in Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood on Sunday was the deadliest in Iraq since US invasion of the country 13 years ago. It caused outrage at the inadequacy of emergency services and the security apparatus.
Iraq’s health ministry said 292 people were killed in Sunday’s atrocity, which struck a shopping center in a district of the city home to mainly Shiite Muslims.
ISIS Takfiri terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack, in which a vehicle packed with explosives was detonated at around midnight local time at the busy al-Hadi Centre just ahead of celebrations marking the end of Ramadan.
The deadly attack came amid a series of almost daily attacks by ISIS as it continues to lose territory Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani criticised the government‘s failure to deal effectively with the threat posed by ISIS.
Meanwhile, Haidar al-Abadi, has demanded the withdrawal of fake British-made bomb detector which have been used by the country's security forces for over 9 years.
The Iraqi Prime Minister also ordered a renewed corruption investigation into the sale of the devices from 2007-10, which cost Iraq more than £53m.
The cost to the Iraqi public will remain incalculable: the vast majority of the bombs that have killed and maimed at least 4,000 people since 2007 have been driven straight past police or soldiers using the devices at checkpoints.
