First, they came for Istanbul. On Tuesday night, three suspected Islamic State militants bombers launched a brazen assault on Turkey’s main airport, exploding their suicide vests after shooting dead numerous passengers and airport staff. At least 45 people were killed. The world panicked. Ataturk International Airport is one of the busiest hubs in Europe and the Middle East, and among its most fortified. Are our airports safe, wondered American television anchors. Could this happen on July 4 in America?

Next, they came for Dhaka. Gunmen whom many have linked to Islamic State raided a popular café in an upscale neighbourhood in Bangladesh’s teeming capital. After a ten-hour standoff, authorities stormed the establishment; at least 20 hostages, mostly Italian and Japanese nationals, died at the militants’ hands. US college students also were among the dead. Islamic State’s reach is growing far from the Middle East, security experts fretted. Foreigners are at risk all over the Muslim world.

Then, they attacked Baghdad. In the early hours of yesterday morning, as hundreds of Iraqis gathered during the holy month of Ramadan, a car bomb exploded in the crowded Karrada shopping district.

The blast killed a staggering number of people — the latest death toll is at least 121 — including many children. The area is predominantly Shia, making it a choice target for the Sunni extremist group.

It is unlikely that this attack, just the latest in an unending stream of tragedy to envelop the Iraqi capital, will generate the same panic in the West as the earlier two incidents. For years now, we have become almost numb to the violence in Baghdad: deadly car bombings there conjure up no hashtags, no Facebook profile pictures with the Iraqi flag, no Western newspaper front pages of the victims’ names and life stories, and only muted global sympathy. The BBC has a timeline of the recent Islamic State-linked attacks in the city and elsewhere in Iraq, including a hideous week of bombings in Baghdad in mid-May:

• June 9, 2016: At least 30 people killed in and around Baghdad in two suicide attacks claimed by Islamic State

• May 17, 2016: Four bomb blasts kill 69 people in Baghdad; three of the targets were Shia areas

• May 11, 2016: Car bombs in Baghdad kill 93 people, including 64 in a market in the Shia district of Sadr City

• May 1, 2016: Two car bombs kill at least 33 people in southern city of Samawa

• March 26, 2016: Suicide attack targets football match in central city of Iskandariya, killing at least 32

• March 6, 2016: Fuel tanker blown up at checkpoint near central city of Hilla, killing 47

• February 28, 2016: Twin suicide bomb attacks hit market in Sadr City, killing 70

And this is only in the calendar year. Ever since the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, and the bungled occupation that followed, Baghdad has been the site of numerous rounds of sectarian blood-letting, al-Qaeda attacks and now the ravages of Islamic State. Despite suffering significant defeats at the hands of the Iraqi army, including the loss of the city of Fallujah, the militant group has shown its willingness and capacity still to brutalise the country’s population. Public anger in the Iraqi capital, as my Washington Post colleague Loveday Morris reports, is not being directed at foreign conspirators or even — first and foremost — at the militants, but at a much maligned government that is failing to keep the country safe.

“The street was full of life last night,” one Karrada resident told The Post, “and now the smell of death is all over the place.”

Ishaan Tharoor, a former senior editor at Time magazine, writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post

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