Thursday, August 16, 2007
Death toll doubles in northern Iraq
Security
(CNN) -- The death toll in this week's suicide bombings in northern Iraq has risen to at least 500, local officials in Nineveh province said Wednesday. A girl wounded in the Tuesday attacks in northern Iraq arrives at a hospital in Duhouk, Iraq, on Wednesday. Iraqi Army and Mosul police sources earlier put the number at 260, but said it was likely to rise; 320 were reported wounded.
The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a "trademark al Qaeda event" designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday. The attacks, targeting Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority, were attempts to "break the will" of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation -- the "surge" -- is failing, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon said.
The bombings highlight the kind of sectarian tensions the troop surge was designed to stop. In another blast Thursday morning, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a busy shopping center in central Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, Iraq's Ministry of Information said. Al Qaeda in Iraq is predominantly Sunni, and Mixon said members of the Yazidi religious minority have received threatening letters, called "night letters," telling them "to leave because they are infidels."
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will -- almost genocide when you consider the fact the target they attacked and the fact that these Yazidis, out in a very remote part of Nineveh province, where there is very little security and really no security required to this point," Mixon said. Sunni militants, including members of al Qaeda in Iraq, have targeted Yazidis in the area before.
Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said there were three suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed. Khalaf said the carnage looks like the aftermath of a "mini-nuclear explosion." More bodies are expected to be found. The U.S. military said there were five bombings -- four at a crowded bus station in Qahtaniya and a fifth in al-Jazeera. The massacre comes ahead of next month's report to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on progress in Iraq.
The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a "trademark al Qaeda event" designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday. The attacks, targeting Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority, were attempts to "break the will" of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation -- the "surge" -- is failing, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon said.
The bombings highlight the kind of sectarian tensions the troop surge was designed to stop. In another blast Thursday morning, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a busy shopping center in central Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, Iraq's Ministry of Information said. Al Qaeda in Iraq is predominantly Sunni, and Mixon said members of the Yazidi religious minority have received threatening letters, called "night letters," telling them "to leave because they are infidels."
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will -- almost genocide when you consider the fact the target they attacked and the fact that these Yazidis, out in a very remote part of Nineveh province, where there is very little security and really no security required to this point," Mixon said. Sunni militants, including members of al Qaeda in Iraq, have targeted Yazidis in the area before.
Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said there were three suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed. Khalaf said the carnage looks like the aftermath of a "mini-nuclear explosion." More bodies are expected to be found. The U.S. military said there were five bombings -- four at a crowded bus station in Qahtaniya and a fifth in al-Jazeera. The massacre comes ahead of next month's report to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on progress in Iraq.
The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Sunni extremists for the "monstrous crime." He said a committee has been formed to investigate. Ashraf Qazi, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, called the attack an "abominable crime aimed at widening the sectarian and ethnic divide in Iraq." Qazi urged Iraqi authorities to bolster their efforts to protect minorities.
The Yazidi sect is a mainly Kurdish minority, an ancient group that worships seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe. A couple of related incidents in the spring highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis. In April, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was brutally beaten, kicked and stoned to death in northern Iraq by other Yazidis in what authorities said was an "honor killing" after she was seen with a Sunni Muslim man. Although she had not married him or converted, her attackers believed she had.
The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another faith. That killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, according to a provincial official.
The Yazidi sect is a mainly Kurdish minority, an ancient group that worships seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe. A couple of related incidents in the spring highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis. In April, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was brutally beaten, kicked and stoned to death in northern Iraq by other Yazidis in what authorities said was an "honor killing" after she was seen with a Sunni Muslim man. Although she had not married him or converted, her attackers believed she had.
The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another faith. That killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later. Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, according to a provincial official.
Labels: Al Qaeda in Iraq, al-Jazeera, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, Qahtaniya, suicide trucks, Tal Uzair, Yezidis
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Yezidis targeted in simultaneous suicide bombings, 175 dead
Security
(Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Wednesday al Qaeda was the "prime suspect" in suicide bombings overnight on an ancient minority sect that Iraqi officials said killed more than 175 people in northern Iraq. Rescue workers searched for bodies in the rubble of dozens of buildings destroyed in up to five simultaneous car bomb attacks.
The attackers, driving fuel tankers, struck densely populated residential areas west of the city of Mosul that are home to members of the Yazidi sect, whose followers are considered infidels by Sunni Islamist militant groups. The fuel tanker attacks occurred about 8pm local time [1700 GMT]. The U.S. military said it was too early to say who was responsible, but the scale and apparently coordinated nature meant the attack carried the hallmarks of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda. The United States has condemned the attack as barbaric.
In the aftermath of the blast, authorities imposed a total curfew in the Sinjar area, which is close to the Syrian border where the U.S. military has been battling al Qaeda in Iraq. It's also one of the transit points for fighters coming into the country from Syria. Sinjar district mayor Dakheel Qassim Hasoun said only people and vehicles involved in rescue efforts would be allowed to move through the area. He said it would be impossible to establish a final death toll any time soon because many bodies were still buried in the rubble of up to 30 houses destroyed in the blasts.
Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Donnelly, U.S. military spokesman for northern Iraq, said U.S. forces were assisting Iraqi emergency agencies as they sifted through the rubble and were providing logistical, security and medical support. Iraqi army captain Mohammad al-Jaad put the death from the attack by at least three suicide bombers driving fuel tankers at 175, with 200 wounded. Hasoun said the death toll could go as high as 200. Dhakil Qassim, a mayor in the town of Sinjar near the attacks who blamed Al Qaida in Iraq, said four trucks approached Qahataniya from dirt roads and they all explodedwithin minutes of each other.
Iraqi authorities said the death toll was so high because most of the destroyed houses, all tightly packed in three Yazidi residential compounds, were made of mud that were shattered by the force of the attack. "It is going to be difficult to get a full death toll because of the nature of the buildings," Garver said.
The U.S. military said five vehicle-borne bombs had been detonated in Yazidi residential compounds in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera. Jaad said the village of Tal Uzair was also hit. The Islamic State in Iraq, an Al Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday's bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are "anti-Islamic."
Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect who live in northern Iraq and Syria. Sunni militants have targeted Yazidis in recent months by kidnapping and killing them. Yazidis in Iraq say they have often faced discrimination because Melek Taus, the chief angel they venerate as a manifestation of God is often identified as the fallen angel Satan in biblical terminology.
Some members stoned a Yazidi teenager to death in April. She had converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend. Police said 18-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad was killed by relatives who disapproved of the match. The incident appears to have sparked an increase in attacks on Yazidis. The bodies of two Yazidi men who had been stoned to death were also found in the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, police said.
The attackers, driving fuel tankers, struck densely populated residential areas west of the city of Mosul that are home to members of the Yazidi sect, whose followers are considered infidels by Sunni Islamist militant groups. The fuel tanker attacks occurred about 8pm local time [1700 GMT]. The U.S. military said it was too early to say who was responsible, but the scale and apparently coordinated nature meant the attack carried the hallmarks of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda. The United States has condemned the attack as barbaric.
In the aftermath of the blast, authorities imposed a total curfew in the Sinjar area, which is close to the Syrian border where the U.S. military has been battling al Qaeda in Iraq. It's also one of the transit points for fighters coming into the country from Syria. Sinjar district mayor Dakheel Qassim Hasoun said only people and vehicles involved in rescue efforts would be allowed to move through the area. He said it would be impossible to establish a final death toll any time soon because many bodies were still buried in the rubble of up to 30 houses destroyed in the blasts.
Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Donnelly, U.S. military spokesman for northern Iraq, said U.S. forces were assisting Iraqi emergency agencies as they sifted through the rubble and were providing logistical, security and medical support. Iraqi army captain Mohammad al-Jaad put the death from the attack by at least three suicide bombers driving fuel tankers at 175, with 200 wounded. Hasoun said the death toll could go as high as 200. Dhakil Qassim, a mayor in the town of Sinjar near the attacks who blamed Al Qaida in Iraq, said four trucks approached Qahataniya from dirt roads and they all explodedwithin minutes of each other.
Iraqi authorities said the death toll was so high because most of the destroyed houses, all tightly packed in three Yazidi residential compounds, were made of mud that were shattered by the force of the attack. "It is going to be difficult to get a full death toll because of the nature of the buildings," Garver said.
The U.S. military said five vehicle-borne bombs had been detonated in Yazidi residential compounds in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera. Jaad said the village of Tal Uzair was also hit. The Islamic State in Iraq, an Al Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday's bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are "anti-Islamic."
Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect who live in northern Iraq and Syria. Sunni militants have targeted Yazidis in recent months by kidnapping and killing them. Yazidis in Iraq say they have often faced discrimination because Melek Taus, the chief angel they venerate as a manifestation of God is often identified as the fallen angel Satan in biblical terminology.
Some members stoned a Yazidi teenager to death in April. She had converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend. Police said 18-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad was killed by relatives who disapproved of the match. The incident appears to have sparked an increase in attacks on Yazidis. The bodies of two Yazidi men who had been stoned to death were also found in the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, police said.
Labels: Al Qaeda in Iraq, al-Jazeera, Duaa Khalil Aswad, fuel tankers, Islamic State in Iraq, Kahtaniya, Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Donnelly, Melek Taus, Qahataniya, Sinjar, suicide bombings, Tal Uzair, Yezidis
