The ice-cream shop that was targeted just after midnight on Tuesday has

been hit at least twice in recent years, and Karrada, a sprawling shopping
and residential district south of the Tigris river with a largely Shia
population, has been struck dozens of times.

In July last year more than 300 people were killed by a bomb at a busy mall
in central Karrada. That atrocity also took place during Ramadan, and was
the single deadliest event caused by a lone attacker since the 2003 invasion
to oust the then leader, Saddam Hussein.

Isis has lost almost all of the territory it seized from Iraqi forces in mid-
2014 and is now facing a losing battle to hang on to the Old City of Mosul,
and villages between the city limits and the Syrian border.

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The Old City is the site of the Grand Nouri mosque, where the Isis leader,
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate over
parts of Iraq and Syria. Controlling a swath of land had been central to its
raison detre for the past three years, and in the absence of the ability to
hold on to ground it had coveted, the group faces a struggle to redefine
itself.

The Iraqi push into the terrorist organisations last redoubt in Mosul has
met fierce resistance and led to high numbers of casualties over the past
five days. The Old City had loomed as the most difficult corner of the
tangled web of roads and lanes that make up the western half of the city, to
where up to 3,000 battle-hardened militants had retreated after losing
control of the eastern bank of the Tigris in February.

Iraqi forces believe they are still weeks away from securing western Mosul.
After the battle is concluded, attention will shift to Baaj, near the Syrian
border, where Baghdadi is known to have spent much of his time in the past
three years, then to the urban strongholds inside Syria of Deir Azzour,
Maedin and Raqqa.