Baghdad - Rescue workers continued late Wednesday to dig
through rubble from four massive explosions in northern Iraq, near
the Syrian border, where the death toll continued to climb
dramatically, and could reach 500, local sources said.
The correspondent of the Arabic news broadcaster Al-Jazeera and
the US station CNN quoted the figure based on numbers from local
doctors and hospitals and from local officials.
The attacks on Tuesday, blamed by US military officials on al-
Qaeda terrorists because they carried the trademark of simultaneous
explosions, targetted four sites in villages 120 kilometres north of
Mosul, news reports said.
One US military official, Major General Benjamin Mixon, told CNN
the killings represented 'almost genocide' because they targetted
the Yazidi sect who constituted most of the victims. The Yazidis, a
religious sect whose followers are concentrated in northern Iraq,
live in villages around Mosul. They do not follow the tenets of
Islam.
Hundreds were injured in the attacks.
The attacks drew international condemnation. In Washington, US
officials called the bombings 'barbaric.'
In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he was 'shocked
and saddened' and made an 'urgent' call for Iraqi leaders to put
aside political and religious differences and 'work together to
protect civilian lives.'
'Nothing can justify such indiscriminate violence against innocent
civilians,' Ban said in a statement.
The Arbil-based correspondent of al-Jazeera said that he had been
told by the head of Sinjar district's hospital that the death toll
had reached 500. But the figures remained unconfirmed by authorities.
Two trucks rigged with explosives were detonated simultaneously in
the Siba Sheikh Khidr housing compound Tuesday night while two more
explosions occurred in the nearby Kar Izir area, also in Sinjar,
causing many buildings to collapse.
Broadcast reports said the trucks used in the explosions were
tankers carrying fuel and water for distribution to the local
population. According to Oweid Ahmed, a policeman from Sinjar, one of
the vehicles was an explosive-laden fuel tanker. It was not yet clear
whether any of the bombings were performed by suicide attackers.
Official Kurdish sources put the number of those dead at 350,
according to al-Jazeera, while 220 people killed and 400 wounded
remained the latest official figure disclosed by the Iraqi army on
Wednesday.
The apparently coordinated bombings close to the city of Mosul
rank among the worst terrorist attacks in Iraq since a US-led
coalition toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.
According to the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI), a
curfew on vehicles was imposed in the town of Sinjar, where the
attacks happened, and it will remain in effect until further notice.
'This morning our hospital received more than 50 wounded,' said
Raad Abdel-Karim, a resident doctor in a nearby hospital. 'We expect
to take in more than 80 more. Many of them are in a stable condition.
Most of the injured that were transferred here are women and
children.'
The condition of some of the wounded remained critical,
according to police sources. Many had to be transferred
to hospitals in Kirkuk and Dahouk in the autonomous Kurdish region,
as Sinjar's hospitals did not have enough capacity to deal with the
deluge of injured victims.
Dakheel Qasem Hassoun, Sinjar's mayor, told VOI that 30 bodies
were 'torn apart' in the explosions.
The targeted housing compound, home to 15,000 people, reportedly
also came under a mortar attack following the triple explosion.
British broadcaster BBC reported earlier that there had been
rising tension recently between Yazidis and Muslims in the area
north-west of Mosul. The latest issues had arisen from the reported
stoning in April by Yazidis of a girl from their community who had
converted to Islam.
Meanwhile, the US military reported that five servicemen were
killed on Tuesday when a helicopter crashed in the vicinity of
Taqaddum Air Base in the western province of Anbar.
In other news, US troops reported the capture Tuesday of a militia
leader suspected of commanding 150 'Shiite extremists'.
The suspect, who was captured Tuesday in a joint US-Iraqi
operation in the central Iraqi city of Najaf, was said to have formed
his own militia group after splitting off from the Shiite Mahdi Army
group.
Doctors in the Kurdish city of Sulaymanyah announced that a mass
grave containing 33 bodies was discovered in the town of Khanakin,
167 kilometres north-east of Baghdad.
The grave is believed to date from the brutal suppression by the
late dictator Saddam Hussein of the 1991 Kurdish uprising against his
regime.
Most of the bodies were found dressed in traditional Kurdish
clothing and blindfolded.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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