Bab Al-Sharqi

The area surrounding Bab Al-Sharqi market is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, the main Shia militia in central Iraq.

[1] Bab al-Sharqi is located on the east bank of the Tigris River, near the Jumhuriya Bridge.

On 22 January 2007 two powerful car bombs ripped through the Bab Al-Sharqi market in Baghdad, killing at least 88 people and wounding 160 others in one of the bloodiest insurgent attacks of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Only three months after the devastating attack, Senator Lindsey Graham complained that the media was not giving the American people "the full picture of what's going on here."

Though he mostly stayed within the heavily secured Green Zone, and traveled outside the Green Zone only with a heavily armed military escort, he unabashedly told reporters of the "signs of success" he witnessed on his visit to Bab al-Sharqi:[3] We went to the market and were just really warmly welcomed.