Rescuers search for victims of bombings in Iraq
Rescuers dug through the muddy wreckage of collapsed clay houses in north-west Iraq today, uncovering at least 200 bodies from suicide truck bombings the US military blamed on al-Qaida.
The victims were members of a small Kurdish sect – the Yazidis – sometimes attacked by Muslim extremists who consider them infidels.
Four suicide truck bombers struck nearly simultaneously yesterday, killing more people than any other concerted attack since November 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City.
It was most vicious attack yet against the Yazidis, an ancient religious community in the region.
Some 300 people were wounded in the blasts, said Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of the nearby town of Sinjar.
Qassim said four trucks approached the town of Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, from dirt roads and all exploded within minutes of each other. He said the casualty tolls were 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,” Qassim said.
“We are expecting to reach the final death toll tomorrow or day after tomorrow as we are getting only pieces of bodies.”
US military spokesman Brig Gen 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 Rescuers dug through the muddy wreckage of collapsed clay houses in north-west Iraq today, uncovering at least 200 bodies from suicide truck bombings the US military blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq violence,” Bergner told reporters in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
“We’re continuing to investigate, and we’ll learn more in the coming days.”
The bombings came as extremists staged other bold attacks yesterday: levelling a key bridge outside Baghdad and abducting five officials from an Oil Ministry compound in the capital in a raid using gunmen dressed as security officers.
Nine US soldiers also were reported killed, including five in a helicopter crash.
The carnage dealt a serious blow to US efforts to pacify the country with just weeks to go before the top US commander Gen David Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a pivotal report to the US Congress amid a fierce debate over whether to begin withdrawing American troops from Iraq.
US officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and commanders have warned they expected Sunni insurgents to step up attacks in a bid to upstage the report.
Petraeus and Crocker issued a joint statement Wednesday condemning the “barbaric attacks on innocent Iraqi men, women and children in Ninevah province yesterday.”
Just last month, Army Maj Gen Benjamin Mixon, the commander of US forces in northern Iraq, said he proposed reducing American troop levels in Ninevah, where he said Iraqi army forces were operating nearly independently.
At the time, he predicted the province would shift to Iraqi government control as early as this month. It was unclear whether that projection would hold, after yesterday’s staggering death tolls.
The Arab League also issued condolences today, in a statement saying “the best way out of this circle of violence is to go ahead with steady steps toward national reconciliation.”
Meanwhile, wounded victims searched for missing relatives yesterday as rescuers continued to pull bodies from the bombs’ wreckage.
“I’m concerned about my wife and five children – I haven’t heard anything about them,” said Dakhil Haji, 35, who owns a grocery stall in the Qahataniya area.
His skull was fractured by a falling utility pole after one of the blasts, and he spoke from a hospital bed in Dahuk, a Kurdish city near the Turkish border about 60 miles north of Qahataniya.
“Some neighbours told me that my house was completely destroyed. I want to know whether they are dead or alive,” he said.
AP Television News footage showed an emergency room in Dahuk overwhelmed with patients. Nurses dabbed the bloodied face of a young boy and held his hand as he wailed in pain. A toddler with bruised eyes had bandages wrapped around his head and arms.
The Yazidis comprise a primarily Kurdish religious sect with ancient roots, that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians. Yazidis, who don’t believe in hell or evil, deny that.
The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of yesterday’s bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are “anti-Islamic.”
In other violence today, police said five people were killed at a fake checkpoint near Khalis, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The checkpoint was set up by al Qaida militants who ambushed a minibus carrying civilians, police said.
Among the dead was a 5-year-old child, they added.
South of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed two people and wounded seven, according to Iraqi police.
And a parked car bomb targeted a police patrol in southern Mosul, killing a civilian and injuring ten others, police and army officers said.
