IRAQ RESCUERS SIFT THROUGH RUBBLE AFTER SUICIDE BLASTS THAT KILLED 200
Guardian Unlimited
Published: Aug 15, 2007
Rescuers were today digging through the muddy ruins of clay houses
in north-west Iraq where suicide bombers last night detonated fuel
tankers rigged with explosives, killing at least 200 members of a
minority sect.
The incident near the Syrian border was one of the deadliest since
the US-led invasion of the country in 2003.
More than 300 people were injured, said Dakhil Qassim, the mayor
of the nearby town of Sinjar, when the fuel tankers blew up in the
remote villages of Kahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair. Officials
today imposed a curfew on the area.
The villages are about 75 miles west of the city of Mosul, a stronghold
of Sunni Islamic militants. The attacks targeted people from the
Yezidi religious minority, whom Sunni extremists regard as infidels.
Four suicide truck bombers struck nearly simultaneously yesterday. The
death toll was higher than in any other concerted attack since last
November, when 215 people died following mortar fire and five car
bombs in Baghdad’s Shia Muslim enclave of Sadr City.
Mr Qassim said four trucks approached from dirt roads and all exploded
within minutes of each other. He said the number of dead and wounded
was expected to rise.
"We are still digging with our hands and shovels because we can’t use
cranes because many of the houses were built of clay," he said. "We
are expecting to reach the final death toll tomorrow or day after
tomorrow as we are getting only pieces of bodies."
A US military spokesman, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, said he
believed the bombings were the work of al-Qaida.
"The car bombs that were used all had the consistent profile
of al-Qaida in Iraq violence," Gen Bergner told reporters in
Baghdad. "We’re continuing to investigate, and we’ll learn more in
the coming days."
Kurdish officials said they had volunteered to protect minority
groups in the area but Baghdad had failed to take them up on the
offer because of its political paralysis.
According to officials in Sinjar, the bombers drove petrol tankers
laden with explosives into three busy commercial neighbourhoods,
flattening residential blocks and causing fires that raged out
of control.
"This is an outrageous and cynical terrorist act against innocent
people," said Jaasim Sinjari, a local official. "The Sunni Arabs are
trying to wipe us out."
He said US helicopters had airlifted the many injured from the base
at Mosul to hospitals in Tal Afar and Kurdish-controlled Dohuk.
Khadir Shamu, a 30-year-old Yezidi who works for the government,
said he and a friend had been relaxing in the centre of Tal Uzair
when the blasts shattered the peaceful evening.
"My friend and I were thrown high in the air. I still don’t know
what happened to him," he said. "Some time later I could feel people
carrying me to an ambulance."
He said the rescue vehicle was packed with 12 other wounded people,
including one who had lost both legs. "Inside the car, there were only
screams of pain for an hour and a half before we reached the hospital."
The White House condemned the bombings as "barbaric attacks" and added:
"Extremists continue to show to what lengths they will go to stop
Iraq from becoming a stable and secure country."
The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, warned
residents last week that an attack was imminent because Yazidis were
"anti-Islamic".
The explosions capped a grim day in which five US troops were killed
in a helicopter crash, four died in other incidents and a suicide
truck bombing near Baghdad destroyed a bridge and killed at least 10.
In Baghdad, dozens of uniformed gunmen abducted a deputy oil minister
and four other officials.
Iraq’s senior figures meanwhile continued a series of meetings aimed
at reviving the country’s political process, and the US military
announced a fresh push to rid the volatile Diyala province of militants
affiliated with al-Qaida.
Kurdish intelligence officials in Mosul say the crackdown on Sunni
extremists in Diyala, and in Anbar province west of Baghdad, has
forced militants towards Mosul, a traditional Sunni heartland.
The Yezidis, who are mainly ethnic Kurds, have inhabited areas to the
west and east of Mosul for centuries. Other communities exist in Syria,
Turkey, Georgia and Armenia. Their faith is a mixture of ancient
and living religions that draws upon Zoroastrian and Mithraistic
elements. However, Christians and Muslims have often regarded Yezidis
as devil worshippers because of their recognition of Satan.
Under Saddam many Yezidi families were driven from their ancestral
lands and were the targets of brutal crackdowns. Since the fall of the
regime in 2003, the fate of Yezidi communities, particularly those in
the insurgent-infested areas west of Mosul, has been just as uncertain.
In April gunmen shot dead 23 Yezidi factory workers in Mosul in
apparent retaliation for the stoning of a teenage Yezidi girl several
weeks earlier.
Police said local Yezidis had stoned the girl to death after she fell
in love with a Muslim man and converted to Islam.
Kurdish authorities in the self-rule region to the east want to
absorb the Yezidi areas, but a planned referendum on the issue is
still months away.