Baghdad terrorist attack: deaths rise to more than 200

At least 213 people have died in a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad, Iraq. The terrorist attack has been claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State and it was the bloodiest attack to hit the Iraqi capital in the last year and one of the most devastating committed so far in Iraq, according to a report updated Monday and quoted by AFP.

The government has declared three days of mourning after the huge blast, which also injured 225 people. More, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the one who announced the three days of national mourning, vowed on Sunday to "punish" those who were responsible for the attack.

"We need a number of days to be able to recover the bodies of victims. It is a difficult task," a member of the civil defense forces quoted by AFP news agency declared. "The lists of victims I saw included whole families - the father and his sons, the mother and her daughters - whole families were wiped out by this explosion." The blast caused strong fire on several buildings and shops. The nearby streets were full of wreckage so the search and then the identification of the victims could take a long time.

Despite the military failures in front of the government troops, Islamic State manages to commit murderous attacks in the very center of the Iraqi capital, comments France Presse.