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Cairo: Twenty three-year-old Ali al-Tamn just wanted to watch the the penalty shootout in the Euro 2016 quarter-final between Italy and Germany on a reliable Wi-Fi connection. It put him in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Tamn was watching the game with his friend Hussein Abdel Rahman, 19, when he decided to go to his father's shop, only 500 metres away in the Karrada shopping area of Baghdad to try a better connection.
Then an explosion ripped through the busy mall.
Tamn, his father Safaa and brother Adnan were dead shortly after.
The suicide bombing, claimed by Islamic State, has been the deadliest single bombing in Iraq since US led forces occupied the country in 2003.
Iraqi officials said on Thursday the death toll had climbed to more than 292 with hundreds injured.
Given the severity of the gruesome attack, a week on many charred bodies are still waiting to be identified.
Rahman grew up playing soccer with the Tamn brothers and worked for their dad.
Now he is grieving their loss.
"Ali had just left me five minutes before it. He was going to finish watching the penalties between Italy and Germany because the Wi-Fi signal was dropping out," he told Fairfax Media hours after the explosion.
"He went and never came back."
"I ran from the back door as soon as I heard the explosion. I could see fires eating up people, they were getting bigger and bigger," Rahman said.
For Haider al-Tamn, 27, the pain of losing his uncle and two cousins has become unbearable.
"There are no feelings anymore. We are numb," he said a day after burying Safaa and loading up empty coffins of his cousins in a funeral procession through Baghdad.
The older Tamn brother Adnan, 24, was a law student along with Ali at the private al-Mansour University and had graduated three days before the bombing.
"We wanted to celebrate Adnan's recent graduation with the whole family and now we have buried them all," Adnan said.
Haider located the disfigured corpses of his cousins, only hours before he spoke to Fairfax Media. He found them after days of searching in hospitals and morgues.
Ali didn't die from the blast. He died from the subsequent fires while trying to find his father.
All three were found in the Laith mall where the fires triggered by the refrigerator truck loaded with explosives claimed more lives as they were trying to escape.
When embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visited the blackened site later, Iraqis hurled stones and angry epithets directed at lax security measures at checkpoints and shoddy building precautions, which led to hundreds of deaths through asphyxiation.
Iraq has been in a state of security chaos since the United States-led invasion in 2003. British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended his decision to help to remove Saddam Hussein as right at the time, after the release of the Chilcot Report which criticised the invasion. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has maintained the same position on Australia's involvement.
In the wake of the Baghdad attack, the Iraqi interior minister resigned and Abadi issued a directive to overhaul the country's security measures and ban shoddy bomb detectors commonly used in checkpoints.
But that doesn't help those grieving for the dead.
Jaafer Kamal, 24, a friend of the brothers from university, found Safaa's blackened body on the third level of the mall. He sobbed, dragging the corpse with his friends through the rubble while they searched for the others.
"They were always together. I know they died together" he said. "The problem is that all these countries are meddling in our poor country. Anytime we stand on our feet they knock us down again".
(Below a tweet with photos of brothers Tamn and Adnan and father Safaa with note from Iraqi Prime Minister consoling the family for their loss.)
تلقت زوجة الشهيد صفاء برقية من رئيس الوزراء يعزيها بإستشهاد زوجها وإثنين من أولادها بتفجير #الكرادة !
،
ولك بعديش ؟ pic.twitter.com/7egn3LPUG3— Mustafa AlShakarchi (@mgsiraq) July 5, 2016
Iraq has been emboldened in its fight against Islamic State after liberating Fallujah but the endemic problems of rife corruption, lax security and sectarianism that led to IS's amassing of territory two years ago are still at play.
Haider Al Tamn served in the Iraqi army against Islamic State, but declined to specify where because of fear of an uncertain security situation.
Zaid al-Ali, a Princeton University academic who authored a book on Iraq and its collapsing state institutions, told Fairfax Media he was pessimistic about any security improvements given the Abadi administration's lack of accountability.
"There has been no accountability of politicians who have been implicated in murder or theft. The only way to hold them accountable these days is to pelt them with stones," Ali said.
"The Islamic State is collapsing but the Iraqi state has a lot of work to do.
"Unless something changes, we will get al-Qaeda 3.0".
