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Kurdish Yazidis fear annihilation after
Iraq bombings
16.8.2007
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August
16, 2007
KAHTANIYA, Northwestern Iraq - Angry Kurdish
members of a minority sect said on Thursday they
feared annihilation and pleaded for help, after
suicide attackers killed scores in possibly the
worst such bomb attack of the Iraq conflict.
Frail clay houses in the centre of Kahtaniya, one of
two villages struck on Tuesday by garbage trucks
packed with explosives, were flattened for several
blocks.
Chunks of concrete and twisted aluminum lay in the
street beside the destroyed homes of hundreds of
Yazidis, a minority sect regarded by Sunni militants
as infidels.
Estimates of the death toll
varied from 175 to 500.
"Their aim is to annihilate us, to create trouble
and kill all the Yazidis because we are not
Muslims," said Abu Saeed, a grizzled, gray-bearded
old man in Kahtaniya.
Saeed told Deputy Prime Minister Dr Barham Salih,
who made a short tour of the devastation, that 51
members of his extended family had been killed.
About 100 angry Yazidi men gathered as Salih met
local officials.
"It's like a nuclear site, the site of a nuclear
bomb," Salih, a Kurd, said.
The U.S. military has said al Qaeda is the prime
suspect for the bombings, perhaps the worst attack
of its kind since the 2003 U.S.-led liberation. It
had warned that such a large-scale attack was
possible before a progress report on the war is
delivered to Congress in mid-September.
"Al Qaeda wants to kill all the Yazidis," said
another Kahtaniya villager, who gave his name only
as Hossein. "Another bomb like this and there will
be no more Yazidis left."
ANCIENT SECT
Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect of
several hundred thousand in northern Iraq and Syria
who say they are persecuted for their beliefs.
In April, gunmen
killed 23 Yazidi factory
workers in Mosul in apparent
retaliation for the stoning several weeks earlier of
a
teenaged Yazidi girl
who police said had fallen in love with a Sunni Arab
and converted to Islam.
Angry Yazidis pleaded for help on Thursday in the
aftermath of the bombings. "We are thirsty. We have
had no water for days," villager Naif Kudar Ismael
said.
Nineveh province governor Duraid Kashmoula said the
blasts buried entire families. He put the death toll
at 220.
Zairyan Othman, minister of health in neighboring
Kurdistan, Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, said
205 were killed and 235 wounded. Iraq's Health
Ministry said on Thursday more than 150 were killed
and more than 200 wounded.
The bombings were the worst coordinated attack in
Iraq since November 2006, when six car bombs in
different areas of Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City
killed 200 people and wounded 250 in the biggest
attack since the U.S.-led liberation in 2003.
Major Rodger Lemons, operations officer for a U.S.
brigade in the area, said rescue efforts were
beginning to wind up.
"My assessment is there's probably no one left alive
in the rubble," he said. "We've transitioned through
to a clean-up phase." He added that about 600 people
were homeless.
The U.S. military said between 175 and 180 people
had probably been killed. "I don't know if we'll
ever get to a point where we'll have an exact
figure," Lemons said.
Rescuers dug through the rubble throughout Wednesday
in scenes reminiscent of an earthquake zone. Bodies
covered by blankets were laid in the street.
Lemons said it appeared two garbage trucks packed
with explosives had been driven to each of the two
villages.
In al-Jazeera, Iraqi security forces shot and killed
the driver of one truck before it reached the
village. Both trucks detonated inside Kahtaniya
village, he said.
U.S. forces launched an airborne assault on a
compound south of Baghdad early on Thursday, the
first strike in a major new offensive that is part
of a countrywide push announced this week against
both Sunni Arab and Shi'ite militants.
In Baghdad, a car bomb in a parking lot killed nine
people and wounded 17 on Thursday near al-Russafi
Square.
Reuters
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