The car bomb ripped through a row of shopfronts on a square in central Baghdad, shattering windows, setting cars ablaze and sending heavy sheets of dark grey smoke billowing into the air. The immediate aftermath of the blast at Al-Andalus Square was captured in a shaky mobile phone video, while another from a few days later showed piles of rubble strewn in the street and a black banner bearing the name Hassan Jawwad Zaghayir hanging in front of the wrecked shop where he was mortally wounded. The explosion was one of a pair of car bombs that killed at least 12 people in central Baghdad on July 31 — just some of the more than 100 attacks that month.
