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Breaking News
In this section, we will post current breaking news relating to the ongoing killing and mistreatment of the Yezidi people in their northern Iraq homeland, as well as in Armenia and locations to which many have migrated. Please check back here often to keep current with the plight of this oft misrepresented "religious/ethnic minority", apparently considered a "soft target" by Moslem extremist groups in Iraq.
Photo: Reuters
Photo: Tom Aspell NBC
August 17, 2009 - 07:24:19
NINEWA / Aswat al-Iraq:
Yazidi residents have surrounded five villages in Ninewa with sand barriers to protect them against possible attacks, according to a Yazidi official.
“The villages of Srijka, Khitara, Doghata, Nafira and Khoshaba (30 km north of Mosul), affiliated to al-Qosh district, have collected money to build sand barriers in an attempt to guard against possible attacks…,” Dawoud Murad Khitari, an official from the Cultural Lalsh Center in Khitara village, north of Mosul, told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.
“This campaign came following attacks in Sinjar, Shaleej and Khazna, which left hundreds of victims,” Khitari explained. “The residents of these villages feel vulnerable to terrorist attacks,” he noted, adding that nearly 30,000 Yazidis live in the villages.
Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. They number around 800,000 individuals in total, but estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs.
Sinjar, 120 km northwest of Mosul, is inhabited by Yazidis, a religious minority whose followers are generally situated in northern Iraq. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages around Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad.
Last July, two suicide bombings hit Talafar City, killing 39 and wounding more than 80 others.
On August 7, a Kia-modeled truck bomb hit a Shiite mosque in the predominantly-Turkmen Sharikhan area (7 km north of Mosul), leaving 39 persons killed and 279 others wounded.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Yezidi Politician Asks Baghdad to Form Support Councils
From Iraq the Model: The head of the Progressive Yezidi Party, Wa'ad Metto said there were certain political ambitions behind the recent bombings in Sinjar (west of Mosul-Nineveh) that killed and wounded more than fifty people. |
From JihadWatch.org:
As predicted many times here, the jihad is back on in Iraq, now that the Americans are not there in numbers sufficient to keep a lid on it.
"Suicide bombers kill 21 in northern Iraq," by Jamal al-Badrani for Reuters:
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers detonated vests packed with explosives in a cafe in a town near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killing 21 people, a health official said, the latest attack in a restive region.
There has been a series of high-profile bombings in and around Mosul in the past fortnight and the U.S. military said on Tuesday that a resilient al Qaeda had set off a string of deadly blasts.
Thursday's attack took place in Sinjar, 390 km (240 miles) northwest of Baghdad, a town whose inhabitants are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect called Yazidis who live in northern Iraq and Syria.
An attack on the Yazidi community two years ago was one of the deadliest bomb attacks in Iraq since the start of 2007, killing and wounding nearly 800 people.
Bombings and shootings are reported almost daily in and around Mosul, the capital of the northern province of Nineveh, where insurgents have exploited disputes between Arabs and Kurds over territory and oil to remain effective....
Mosul, Iraq - In the second such killing in as many days, police on Thursday said they had found the body of another member of the minority Yezidi sect murdered near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
Police said the man had been shot in the head and in the chest, and that his body was found in the Bashiqa district east of Mosul, where Iraqi and US forces have recently ramped up their campaign to break insurgent groups responsible for deadly, and near-daily, attacks in and near the city.
Earlier on Thursday, four people were killed and a fifth was injured when a car bomb exploded as an Iraqi police patrol passed through western Mosul, police said.
On Wednesday afternoon, the body of another Yezidi man was found in a field, also near Mosul, an area where in recent years many Christians and members of other religious minorities in Iraq have been killed by insurgents.
Sunni extremists regard Yezidis as heretics, and members of the religious group say they have been subject to discrimination. Many Yezidis have fled Iraq to find refuge in other countries.
Iraqi security forces have arrested more than 100 insurgents in Mosul, some 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, since they began an offensive dubbed "Operation New Hope" on February 20. (dpa)
Fear and mistrust plague Iraq's Mosul
September 11, 2008
By Tim Cocks
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Falah Mohammed peered over his shoulder as he spoke of how militants threatened to kill him and his family unless he quit his government job.
"It wasn't worth the risk after the third threatening letter, so I left," said the former guard in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. "Insurgents have created so much fear in this place."
Officials and security personnel die at the hands of gunmen nearly every day in Mosul, a city of 1.8 million people still struggling to shake off a determined insurgency while much of Iraq enjoys its best security in years.
Attacks in Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province have fallen since an Iraqi-led offensive against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda and other insurgents was stepped up in May. Markets are busier and traffic heavier.
But residents say a climate of fear persists in Mosul, an ancient melting pot of ethnic and sectarian groups.
"People here are very afraid," said Nisreen Mustafa, a housewife. "We always heard explosions before the operation and we still hear them a lot now. What's changed?"
U.S. military officials say attacks fell from around 130 per week just before the May offensive to 30 a week in Nineveh by July, before creeping up to 60-70 per week.
"It's things like targeted drive-bys on Iraqi police," said Major Adam Boyd, a U.S. military intelligence officer in Mosul.
"There's a campaign of intimidation (against) ... the Iraqi security forces ... to get the local populace to feel insecure."
Two weeks ago, insurgents tried to kill Major-General Riyadh Jalal Tawfiq, commander of military operations in Nineveh, with a roadside bomb. Two professors from Mosul University have been killed in the past three months.
ETHNIC PATCHWORK
A U.S. army patrol rumbles through Mosul, past a main street so devastated by fighting that barely a building stands. Bombed out concrete roofs droop over collapsed walls. Rubble litters streets. The vehicles cross a bridge over the Tigris River and the smell of raw sewage fills the air.
But as neighboring western Anbar province has shown, even the most violent, lawless places in Iraq can be turned around.
The desert region of Anbar was lost to insurgents in 2006, but this month the U.S. military handed control of security back to Iraqi forces after Sunni Arab tribes joined forces with the military to largely expel al Qaeda from the province.
U.S. officials do not expect Anbar's triumph to be repeated easily in northern Iraq, where communities are a complex patchwork of Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs, Kurds, ethnic Turkmen, pre-Islamic Yazidi Kurds and Assyrian Christians.
Anbar by comparison is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab.
"The dialogue in Anbar between sheikhs willing to put aside their differences is one reason ... they (succeeded)," said Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Molinari, U.S. army operations officer in Mosul.
"You don't see that here in Nineveh. The provincial government is not open to that kind of dialogue."
LACK OF TRUST
Mistrust between Arabs, who make up most of the police, and Kurds, who fill most army posts, hinders intelligence efforts.
In a hot, stuffy office with only one fan, U.S. Army Captain Adam Cannon greets two Iraqi army officers in their Kurdish tongue, chats, then hands them a list of suspected insurgents.
But there's a problem, says Major Jahir Bahoddin: few in the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods will talk.
"They won't help us," he told Reuters. "They'd really rather not cooperate with Kurds. We are trying to tell them: 'we're here to rid your neighborhood of insurgents'. Even when they want to help, they are too afraid to speak."
Cannon said Kurdish army officers, mistrustful of Arabs, do not share information with the police. Many Kurds have bitter memories of Saddam Hussein's oppression of Kurds in the 1980s.
Ultimately, officials say, success will depend on reviving the economy of this battered metropolis, which sprawls around the crumbling walls of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.
Jobless men are easily coaxed into militant groups and residents are losing patience with the pace of reconstruction.
"A lot of things need to be fixed and they're not doing it," said Saad Mohammed Rasheed, a former soldier in Saddam's army who now runs a shop. "There's no water, no electricity. We don't hate the Americans any more; our anger is for the government."
(Editing by Dean Yates and Mark Trevelyan)
Turkish military moving into Iraq will put minorities under severe risk
October 2007
Turkish military action in the Kurdish Region of northern Iraq will put the lives of Iraqi minorities, who are already facing violence and persecution, at severe risk, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) warned on Thursday.
A large proportion of Iraq’s religious and ethnic minorities, including Assyrians, Shabaks, Turkmen and Yazidis live in the area administered by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) or in the neighbouring areas of Nineveh or Kirkuk.
“Groups like the Yazidis will become victims of both sides. On one side they are being killed by fanatics who call them unbelievers. If Turkish troops invade Iraq they will also be subject to violence because they live and mix in the Kurdish areas,” Ali Seedo Rasho, President of the Yazidi Cultural Association in Iraq, said in a phone interview from Syria to where he has fled for his own safety.
Yazidis, adherents of a 4000-year-old pre-Islamic faith, have been the targets of bloody violent attacks, the worst was in August where close to 500 people were killed in two bomb attacks. Around 55,000 Yazidis are believed to be living in the Kurdish areas. Some 3,000 Christians are also reported to have moved to the Kurdish areas while sizable numbers of Turkmen and Shabaks also live there.
Rasho says that most minorities like the Yazidis are already living in very tough economic circumstances and a military onslaught will worsen the situation for them. “Life is already very difficult for them, they don’t know how to protect themselves as it is, so Turkish military action will cause big problems for them,” he adds.
Last week the Turkish parliament voted to let troops conduct military operations in Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels, who use northern Iraq as a refuge to conduct attacks on Turkey. Governments, including the US and UK, have urged Turkey not to march into Iraq and the Iraqi government itself has made the request whilst also pledging to limit the rebel’s activities and close their offices in Iraq.
MRG condemns violent attacks by armed separatists in Turkey that have led to civilian deaths in horrific bombings, and calls on those responsible to be brought to justice. However, any large-scale military incursion into northern Iraq risks destabilising and inviting increased insurgent attacks on KRG areas or neighbouring governorates, leading to a large loss of human life.
"The history of Turkey and Iraq shows that during armed conflicts, it is the smaller minorities who suffer most. The Iraqi, Turkish and Kurdish authorities must avoid armed conflict that will further destabilise the situation in both countries," said Clive Baldwin, MRG’s Head of International Advocacy.
A landmark report by MRG in February 2007 stated that religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq are facing unprecedented levels of violence, and in some cases, risk being eradicated completely from their ancient homeland.
Web: www.minorityrights.org
Associated Press (AP)
December 11, 2007
Author: PAUL SCHEMM Associated Press
Publication: Associated Press Archive
Iraq's embattled Yazidi minority, the target of the worst single terrorist attack since the U.S.-led invasion, now is looking to the Kurdish regional government for protection.
In August, four suicide truck bombs detonated simultaneously in the small village of Qahataniya near the Iraqi border town of Sinjar, killing more than 500 Yazidis, a devastating blow to a community of no more than 500,000 people. "While there have always been massacres and attacks, never...
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Sep 15, 7:04 AM EDT
Al Queda: Bounty on Swedish cartoonist (exerpt)
By MAGGIE MICHAEL
Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq offered money for the murder of a Swedish cartoonist and his editor who recently produced images deemed insulting to Islam, according to a statement carried by Islamist Web sites Saturday.
In a half hour audio file entitled "They plotted yet God too was plotting," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi also named the other insurgent groups in Iraq that al-Qaida was fighting and promised new attacks, particularly against the minority Yazidi sect.
(Article truncated here)
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Report: Iraqis Losing Religious Freedom (truncated)
By MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press Writer
AP Photo - Karim/Kadim
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Religious freedom has sharply deteriorated in Iraq over the past year because of the insurgency and violence targeting people of specific faiths, despite the U.S. military buildup intended to improve security, a State Department report said Friday.
The Annual Report on International Religious Freedom found the violence is not confined to the well-known rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
"The ongoing insurgency significantly harmed the ability of all religious believers to practice their faith," said the report released by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In her remarks, Rice did not specifically address the situation in Iraq but said the report, covering 198 countries, was an important element of President Bush's efforts to promote religious freedom worldwide.
"The ongoing insurgency significantly harmed the ability of all religious believers to practice their faith," said the report released by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In her remarks, Rice did not specifically address the situation in Iraq but said the report, covering 198 countries, was an important element of President Bush's efforts to promote religious freedom worldwide.
"Freedom of religion is integral to efforts to combat the ideology of hatred and intolerance that fuels global terrorism," she said.
Rice did not answer reporters' questions and turned the presentation over to John Hanford, the department's ambassador at large for international religious freedom, who also did not mention Iraq in his opening remarks.
"What we're dealing with in Iraq is really a security situation that makes it difficult for religious practice to occur in a normal way," he said in answer to a reporter's question. He added that Iraq's constitution guarantees religious freedom but said that was hampered by sectarian violence and that worshippers were getting caught in the "crossfire" of broader attacks.
The report, however, painted a starker picture in Iraq.
"Many individuals from various religious groups were targeted because of their religious identity or their secular leanings," the report said.
It found that members of all religions in Iraq are "victims of harassment, intimidation, kidnapping, and killings" and that "frequent sectarian violence included attacks on places of worship."
Muslims who practice less-strict versions of their faith suffer because "conservative and extremist Islamic elements exert tremendous pressure on society to conform to their interpretations of Islam's precepts," the report said.
At the same time, it said, "non-Muslims (are) especially vulnerable to pressure and violence, because of their minority status and, often, because of the lack of a protective tribal structure."
Conditions worsened after the February 2006 bombing of a prized Shia mosque in the town of Samarra, the report said, and have continued to deteriorate over the past year.
"Terrorist attacks rendered many mosques, churches, and other holy sites unusable" and others closed under threat of attack, the report said.
It listed 38 separate attacks perpetrated against adherents of various religions, many of them Christians, between July 2006 and June 2007. "The magnitude of sectarian attacks on both Sunnis and Shia were also extremely high, albeit difficult to track," it said.
The report did not cover August 2007, when 520 people - mainly members of the Yazidi community, a Kurdish-speaking religious minority - were killed in quadruple suicide bombings blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq.
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Bombings are deadliest since Iraq war began
Officials’ death toll estimates range from 250 to 500; U.S. blames al-Qaida
BAGHDAD - Rescuers used bare hands and shovels Wednesday to claw through clay houses shattered by an onslaught of suicide bombings that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect in the deadliest attack of the Iraq war.
The U.S. military blamed al-Qaida in Iraq, and an American commander called the assault an "act of ethnic cleansing."
The victims of Tuesday night's coordinated attack by four suicide bombers were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect that has been targeted by Muslim extremists who consider its members to be blasphemers.
The blasts in two villages near the Syrian border crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage. Entire neighborhoods were flattened.
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide," Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, told CNN. He said that was evident from the fact Yazidis live in a remote part of Ninevah province that has been far from Iraq's conflict.
Mixon said last month that he proposed reducing American troop levels in Ninevah and predicted the province would shift to Iraqi government control as early as this month. It was unclear whether that projection would hold after Tuesday's staggering casualties.
Death estimates ranged widely.
Zayan Othman, health minister for Iraq's nearby autonomous Kurdish region, said 250 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and some 350 people were injured.
But the death toll was put as high as 500 by some local officials, including Hashim al-Hamadani, a senior provincial security official; Kifah Mohammed, director of Sinjar hospital; and Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed. They agreed with Othman that about 350 were wounded.
None of the officials provided information on how they arrived at their estimates. The figures could not be independently checked because the area was under curfew and casualties had been taken to numerous hospitals.
Even the lower death estimate far surpassed the previous bloodiest attack of the war — 215 people killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City last Nov. 23.
U.S. officials believe insurgents have been regrouping across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and the bombings coincided with the start of a major offensive by American and Iraqi troops against militants in the Diyala River Valley.
Blow to upcoming U.S. report
The carnage dealt a serious blow to the Bush administrations hopes of presenting a positive picture in a progress report on Iraq to be delivered by the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker in about four weeks.
Petraeus warned that he expected Sunni Arab insurgents to stage more spectacular attacks ahead of the report to Congress, whose members are deeply divided over whether to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
Sect under fire
Minority sects such as the Yazidis are especially vulnerable as militants seek new targets to avoid the strict security measures clamped on Baghdad and surrounding areas to stop violence among warring Sunni and Shiite factions.
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Aug 15, 5:53 PM EDT Minority religions under attack in Iraq
By SARAH DiLORENZO
Associated Press Writer
The suicide bombings that ravaged the Yazidi sect in Iraq underscored the fears of violence and insecurity binding many of the nation's religious minorities, ranging from Christians who are fleeing their ancient enclaves to a dwindling sect that follows the teachings of John the Baptist.
The various religious groups - which in total account for no more than 3 percent of the population - increasingly worry that they will be caught helplessly in the battles between the majority Shiite and Sunni factions or, as in the case in Tuesday's attack, directly targeted by extremists.
"Minorities have historically inhabited areas that are disputed, that lie at the fault lines of the other communities," said Mark Lattimer, executive director of the London-based Minority Rights Group.
The Yazidi, said Lattimer, have a double curse.
They live in a strategic corridor between Mosul, the chief city in northern Iraq, and the borders of Turkey and Syria. The area could become increasingly coveted territory for the insurgent group al-Qaida in Iraq, which appears to be seeking to retrench in northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad by U.S.-led offensives.
The group is blamed for the series of four suicide truck bombings that claimed at least 250 lives in the Yazidi town of Qahataniya in the deadliest attack on civilians since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Yazidi also are often scorned by Muslims as infidels for their blend of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism, the pre-Islamic faith of Persia. The Yazidi - mostly ethnic Kurds - date their beliefs back 4,000 years and worship an angel figure, Malak Ta'us, or Peacock Angel, who is considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians. Yazidis, who don't believe in hell or evil, deny the characterization.
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."
Small communities of Yazidis can be found in Syria, Turkey, Georgia and Armenia, but the majority of the estimated 100,000 believers live in Iraq. Most Yazidis, even young people, choose to live in isolated communities, though they often face extreme poverty.
Lattimer said that while Saddam Hussein would target minority groups if it suited his political objectives, these small sects were generally left alone. Since the 2003 invasion, however, the minorities have been least able to protect themselves, he said.
Many minorities groups have chosen to flee - threatening to cripple communities whose roots stretch back thousands of years.
The Sabean Mandaeans, a pre-Christian sect that follow the teachings of John the Baptist, now numbers about 5,000 in Iraq, down from an estimated 25,000 in early 2003, according to testimony by Suhaib Nashi, general-secretary of the Mandaean Associations Union, to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in July.
As many as 50 percent of Iraq's Christians - which once numbered between 1 million and 2 million - may already have left the country, according to a report issued in May by the commission. Christians are at particular risk as perceived supporters of the United States and its Western allies, said a Minority Rights Group report.
The Jewish community, which is also accused by extremists of sympathizing with U.S. troops, has a long history of persecution in Iraq, which has prompted several waves of emigration, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Lattimer said it is difficult to calculate their current numbers because they mostly do not want to draw attention, but they comprise a "very, very small residual community."
Only eight Jews remain in Baghdad, said an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Andrew White, who has aided the group. About a century ago, Jews accounted for one-third of the city's population as recently as a century ago.
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United Press International (UPI)
January 15, 2008
BAGHDAD, (UPI) -- A majority of Iraq's parliamentarians have signed an agreement against Iraqi Kurds' moves to unilaterally develop the oil sector and control oil-rich Kirkuk.
The new agreement between a dozen political factions in Iraq also aligns one-time opponents against a dominant Shiite political party that wants to create a large autonomous region in the oil-rich south.
Dar al Hayat reports leaders of political parties representing 150 of Iraq's 275 parliamentarians signed the pact.
"There must be a formula for maintaining the unity of Iraq and the distribution of its wealth," Osama Najafi, of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular National List party, said at a news conference.
"Oil and gas are a national wealth and we are concerned about those who want to go it alone when it comes to signing deals," he said, Gulf Daily News reports.
The political parties, which have quit Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition government, are also uniting against the Kurdistan Regional Government's move to add oil-rich Kirkuk to its territory.
In doing so, the new allies are taking on two of the key supporters of Maliki's government, the Kurdish Coalition and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, in what could be a bid to rejoin with Maliki.
The deal is only tentative, falling short of officially uniting a new block in Parliament, but the parties' members would make up at least 45 percent of the 275-member legislative body.
Signatories to the agreement include Sunni parties National Dialogue Front and Iraqi Accord Front. A faction of the IAF recently signaled support of the Kurds.
A faction of the Dawa Party, which has opposed Maliki's Dawa Party, also signed on, as did the Sadr Movement, led by Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite Cleric with a large militia force that had, under Allawi's rule, been targeted by coalition forces, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The Iraqi Turkmen Front and the Yazidi Block also agreed to the pact, Azzaman reports.
The Kurds have expressed frustration during negotiations with the central government over the country's proposed oil law. The KRG wants a decentralized governance of the sector; Baghdad and others are pushing for central control over the planning and development of oil.
The Kurds passed their own regional law in August and have signed more than 20 deals with Kurdish and international oil firms since.
Baghdad calls the deals illegal.
Sadr's Sheik Walid Kraimawi said Kurds are demanding too much, the Los Angeles Times reports.
It quoted Kurdish Parliamentarian Mahmoud Othman as saying the groups are against Kurds.
The ISCI Party, which aligns with the Kurds, has wanted to create a region of Iraq's southern oil-rich provinces, similar to the semiautonomy afforded to Kurds in the north. The new agreement is designed to challenge that as well.
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Sep 26, 2007 at 8:00 AM Violence flares in northern Iraq BAGHDAD (UPI) -- A suicide bomber in northwestern Iraq targeting the home of a tribal leader killed 10 civilians and injured 11 others, police said. -------------------------- Sept. 9, (UPI) Yazidi Bombing Mastermind Killed MOSUL, Iraq (UPI) -- The al-Qaida militant thought to have masterminded the bombings of the Yazidi sect in northwestern Iraq has been killed, authorities said Sunday. ------------------------- August 16, 2007 Rescue operation in full force after Iraq truck bombings Mujahed Mohammed AFP TAL AFAR & BAGHDAD -- UPDATE: More than 400 people were slaughtered in four suicide truck bomb attacks in northern Iraq, targeting the ancient Yazidi religious sect, a senior interior ministry official said Thursday. "More than 400 people were killed and the toll is expected to rise," the ministry's director of operations, Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf, said. He said more than two tonnes of explosives were packed into the four bombs that ripped through two villages in Nineveh province late Tuesday. Entire families of Yazidis were wiped out after suicide bombers, which the US military said were from Al-Qaeda, blew up the lorries full of explosives in the villages of Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah. Two days after the bombings, rescue teams of hundreds of soldiers, police and civilians were clawing through the devastation of flattened homes, some helping by hand to sift through the rubble looking for the dead. Rescuers dug through the rubble of devastated Iraqi communities Wednesday after suicide bombers killed more than 200 members of a minority sect in the bloodiest spate of attacks of the war. Entire families were wiped out after suicide bombers, which the US military said were from Al Queda, blew up four lorries packed with explosives late Tuesday in two northeastern villages, inhabited by the ancient Yazidi religious sect. "It was like a nuclear explosion. The second blast was even stronger," said army Captain Jalal Mohammed, who rushed to the village of Qataniyah with his unit only to find scenes of devastation and grief. "Everything was destroyed. Houses, buildings, shops. It was horrible. There was a huge number of casualties bleeding all over the place. There were pieces of flesh everywhere. It was a tragedy. Dead people everywhere," he said. Zeryan Abdul Rahman, the health minister in the regional Kurdish government, said late Wednesday that, "as of now, the death toll stands at 200, but it is expected to rise as corpses are still being pulled out from the debris." Doctor Mohammed Waadallah from the governorate of Nineveh province said 375 people were lying wounded in seven different hospitals, as rescue teams searched frantically for survivors under the expanse of rubble. "The rescue operation is still on to get the survivors out from the rubble," Nineveh governor Duraid Mohammed Qashmula said. Doctor Kefaa Mohammed, head of the general hospital in Sinjar, the closest town, said his staff were struggling to treat the overwhelming number of casualties at a clinic equipped to "treat only 10 people." The bombers struck the villages of Qataniyah and Adnaniyah, said Dakhil Qassim Hassun, mayor of the Sinjar municipality, and Abdel Rahim Al Shammari, mayor of Baaj. New bride Samira Chiad, 21, said from hospital in the nearby town of Tal Afar that her husband and nine of his family were killed. Her life was spared only because she had been visiting her parents when tragedy struck. "When I was on the way back to my husband's, there was a big explosion. The sky filled with fire. I was hit in my head, and I passed out. When I came to, there was another explosion," she said, head and body swathed in bandages. Jamal Faris, an Iraqi soldier, rushed home from an outlying army base to discover that his children, brothers, and cousins were killed. "I rushed to my house. It was destroyed. I started searching for my family ... Two of my children and two of my brothers were killed. "My uncle's house was also destroyed. I found the whole family killed. My uncle, his wife, and their six children," he said. Shammari said about 70 houses were razed by the bombings, and police had imposed curfews in Sinjar and Tal Afar, once held up as a model by US President George W. Bush, but, itself, no stranger to bloodshed. "Scores of people are flocking to donate blood to save the wounded who are admitted in seven hospitals in Nineveh and Dohuk provinces," he said. With 200 deaths already confirmed, the assault will almost certainly prove deadlier than the one that killed 202 November 23, 2006 in a string of car bombs in Baghdad's teeming Shiite slum of Sadr City. It is also one of the deadliest global attacks since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki blamed extremists for the "heinous crime" while the US military blamed Al Qaeda's affiliates, who have claimed a string of spectacular attacks in Iraq's bloody sectarian conflict. Hundreds of people, including US troops, local police, soldiers, and survivors, were taking part in the rescue operation, some even helping by hand to sift through the rubble, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Donnelly said. "Al Qaeda in Iraq. This is their signature attack and [they] distributed flyers to the community telling them 'to get out, they were infidels,'" Donnelly said, when asked who was responsible. General David Petraeus, the head of coalition forces in Iraq, is to give a much-anticipated update on operations in early September - and the US military believes that militants want to escalate attacks to undermine the report. Yazidis, who are estimated to number several hundred thousand worldwide, speak a dialect of Kurdish, but follow a pre-Islamic religion, and have their own cultural traditions. They believe in God the creator, and respect the Biblical and Koranic prophets, especially Abraham, but their main focus of worship is Malak Taus, the chief of the archangels, often represented by a peacock. Followers of other religions know this angel as Lucifer or Satan, leading to popular prejudice that the secretive Yazidis are devil-worshippers. The community has attempted to remain aloof from the vicious sectarian and political conflicts gripping much of the rest of Iraq, but in recent months relations with nearby Sunni Muslim communities have worsened dramatically. Bloodshed in northern Iraq continued Wednesday, with police reporting two car bomb attacks in crowded markets in the oil hub of Kirkuk. At least two people were killed and another 13 wounded when the bombs exploded in a Kurdish area of Kirkuk, said local police chief Burhan Tayeb. Published: Aug. 15, 2007 at 6:02 PM --------------------------- |
Published: Aug. 14, 2007 at 6:35 PM |
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