Death Toll From Iraq Bombings Likely To Be Worst of War
BAGHDAD - Officials said Wednesday that as many as 500 people probably died in a series of coordinated truck bombings that devastated two northern Iraqi villages Tuesday and set a record for mass carnage in war-torn Iraq.
Residents and rescue workers in Tal al Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar, two villages near the Syrian border in Nineveh province, spent Wednesday pulling the dead and wounded from the rubble of clay homes that had collapsed when the massive bombs exploded.
The confirmed death toll was at least 250 and climbing, officials said. Five hundred more were wounded, many critically. More than 100 one-story homes and shops were destroyed by the blasts.
Rescue workers set up tents on a highway between the cities of Dohuk and Mosul to house the wounded after health ministry officials said area hospitals were full. The area of devastation in one of the villages measured a half-mile in diameter.
“We cannot identify at least 60 bodies for which there is evidence because there’s nothing but strips of flesh as a result of the strength of the blast,” said Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of the Sinjar district, where the two towns are located. “I do not expect the rescue teams to finish their search for bodies today.”
Dr. Ziryan Othman, the minister of health for the Kurdistan region, likened the devastation to a natural disaster.
“What took place in Tal al Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar was a vast volcano in humanitarian terms that shook the area,” he said. “Many of the injured are in need of in-depth treatment.”
The expected death toll dwarfs Iraq’s previous deadliest series of bombings, which killed 215 people in Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City on Nov. 23.
It was unclear how the explosions, which struck two villages nearly simultaneously in the early evening, fit into Iraq’s quilt of political and ethnic rivalries.
U.S. officials blamed al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni Muslim extremist group that has targeted American troops, Iraqi government forces and Shiite Muslim civilians. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite, blamed Sunni extremists. Kurdish officials said the blast was part of the jockeying between Kurds and Arabs for control of northern Iraq, though Nineveh province lies outside the Kurdish autonomous region.
Many, however, said the blast appeared to be the latest spasm in a blood feud that erupted earlier this year when members of Iraq’s non-Muslim Yazidi ethnic minority stoned to death a teenage girl they accused of dating a Sunni Arab man and converting to Islam.
The brutal death of Doaa Khalil Aswad, 17, in April was captured on video by cell phone. Stomach-turning images of her writhing as she was beaten and pelted with stones by hundreds of young Yazidi men spread across the Internet.
Two weeks later, 23 Yazidi men were taken from a bus and executed.
An Aswad relative, who spoke only on the condition that he not be identified further, said he believed the bombing was also revenge for her death.
“After the death of Doaa at the hands of Yazidi young men, many Yazidi are being killed and displaced at the hands of extremists” outside Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, the relative said. “Unfortunately, the media concentrated on the death of Doaa but mentioned nothing about what the Yazidis are facing after the death - killings and car bomb attacks.”
There may be as many as 350,000 Yazidis in Iraq, but the count is uncertain in part because Yazidis are secretive about their religion. Their religion’s origin traces back to ancient Persian practices but includes aspects of Islam, though in ways that have made the sect anathema to Sunni and Shiite traditions.
Yazidis believe, for example, that God first created seven angel-like beings, who then created Adam. The seven occasionally return to earth in reincarnated form, Yazidis believe. The central focus of their worship is the angel Malak Taus, represented as a peacock.
Sinjar Mayor Qassim said that for months after Aswad’s killing, the villages have been bombarded with fliers from the Islamic State of Iraq, an al Qaida front organization, telling the Yazidis to leave.
“They were clear and candid threats that these people have left the Islamic faith and are not good people anymore, and that they should leave the land of Iraq because they have left the true faith,” Qassim said.
Idou Baba Sheikh, the adviser on Yazidi affairs to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, blamed the central government for failing to protect the minority sect.
“This crime was committed against the people of the villages because they are Yazidi Kurds,” he said.
Official accounts of the blasts varied. Iraqi authorities said four bombs were involved, three at a bus station and a marketplace in Tal al Azizziyah and one in Sheikh Khadar.
American accounts put the number at five, with four striking a bus station in Tal al Azizziyah and the other detonating in a residential area of Sheikh Khadar.
Americans referred to the two villages by their Arabic names, Qahataniya for Tal al Azizziyah and Adnaniyah for Sheikh Khadar.
Some accounts said the explosives were concealed in fuel tankers; others said the bombs were hidden underneath haystacks. There was no official estimate of the size of the bombs, and U.S. officials didn’t respond to requests for more information.
There was no doubt, however, about the blasts’ destructive power - Tal al Azizziyah was all but destroyed by the explosions.
Brig. Gen. Waad Allah Doski, the chief of police in Dohuk, said that one bomb struck Tal al Azizziyah’s central market and that a second explosion moments later rocked a bus stop nearby.
Damage was also extensive in Sheikh Khadar, where the primary explosion struck a densely packed residential neighborhood.
Authorities imposed a curfew, which remained in effect Wednesday, and U.S. and Iraqi forces sent in rescue workers, including helicopters, to ferry out the wounded.
Victims were taken to hospitals in the nearby cities of Tal Afar, Mosul and Dohuk. Doctors frantically treated the wounded but were quickly were running out of supplies.
“There is nothing I can do for them,” one doctor in Tal Afar said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters. “Many of them are in critical condition. Most of them have injuries to their heads and brains and need to be taken to hospitals outside of Iraq urgently.”
(Taha is a special correspondent who reported from Mosul. Fadel reported from Baghdad.)
© McClatchy Newspapers 2007
WHY isn’t the US stepping in to treat these victims? We’re supposed to be so humanitarian. We created this crisis, and stood aside as it worsened, and are doing nothing about it. We blame the central Iraqi government (which WE created) and take no responsibility for our part.
We shoot Iraqi women and children and then drive away, leaving them to die. So why do they hate us? Well, they didn’t until Bush showed up. He went from blowing up frogs as a kid to blowing up countries as a fraudulent president.
Along with his war crimes, I think he should be impeached for destroying the foundation of our country, the Constitution. And every lawmaker who voted in favor of him doing that should be thrown out of office. Every last one.
You are absolutely correct Kathy, but you aren’t in charge. ___ Wish you were.
The discussions we all have about impeachment are always right on target, but the talk is getting so old, the same rhetoric never changes and we all realize getting rid of Bush and Cheney is a pipe dream. Hope is our outlet and “I hope” doesn’t hack the mission.
Added to those pessimistic comments of reality, it looks as if Bush will bomb Iran and will stay in office indefinently.
Vietnam
Kind words, Kem, but I wouldn’t want to be in charge of this mess. We’re better off with putting Dennis in charge of straightening it out.
KEM,
That is the problem with this so called democracy. ‘We’ are supposed to be in charge. Our leaders do not act upon ideas best for the citizenry of this country. Bush called largest anti war protest in 40 years a focus group. The new Dem congress is doing next to nothing to end the war, even knowing it is the reason we put them in power.
Nothing will happen to the corrupt, for profit murderers running this country. They will step down and receive lucrative book deals, speaking engagements and lobbying positions.
We all have strong feelings about the situation. What will we do? It is terrible, but we will do nothing, except type and talk about it.
The problem is the American public are complacent and in many instances downright ignorant. They are too busy deciding whether they want low fat milk in their latte or what SUV to buy next year. The ones I see that do follow politics at all get their info from Fox news and if you look closely you can see that glassy look in their eyes when BillO comes on the ole tube…
Did anyone catch the news that the suicide rate in the US army is at its highest in 26 years?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6950158.stm
It is curiously missing (at this time 16:24 EDT) from the US MSM, though it is being widely carried by the world press.
4 MILLION = GENOCIDE
Yes Shane, I did.
I met a young woman at the dog park who is a Republican and was in the military, voted for Bush but wouldn’t again because she thinks that he means well, but is in over his head. Well, an hour and a half later after hearing from several of us, she was headed for the National Initiative and Kucinich websites (never having heard of either of them), and was ready to impeach Bush. She was stunningly uninformed, as are most Americans. It amazes me that they are even unhappy with how things are going, they have so little information.
The ignorance of our population is a national tragedy. Even many progressive thinkers have never heard of Commondreams.
“U.S. officials blamed al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni Muslim extremist group that has targeted American troops, Iraqi government forces and Shiite Muslim civilians.”
So it was that darn Sunni Muslim extremist group called “al Qaida in Iraq” who gone did this. I wonder what they are named when they cross the border?
One of the troubling aspects of distant warfare is that propaganda begets simplicity, the mainstream media will cast opposing forces for easy comprehension as ‘one football team vs. another’. As the US brutalists work at their bloody conquest, the suicide bombing is another strategic resource that is useful. The Sunnis were armed with US weaponry, and when they misbehave they are scolded and ‘Bin Ladened’ as Al Qaida. The US Military capitalizes on these clean up efforts, liquidating potential resistance.
The war is going swimmingly. Just as planned. Where would the American economy be without it?
The bottomline is the bottomline.
Prosecute all American war criminals and war profiteers.
Peace to you and yours.
Bush went from blowing up frogs to blowing up countries. That’s quite a leap! Jeffrey Dahmer went from abusing animals to killing people but for different motives. The difference between Dahmer and Bush is Dahmer could be apprehended and tried and sentenced and was ultimately killed in prison. Bush will get his but how and when is up for grabs. The sad part is we have to watch this sad scenario of a government play out like some horrible movie. I tell you sometimes I think the American dream has turned into the American nightmare. I think of how frightened Dahmer’s victims must have felt. But then I think of Bush’s victims and there are so many more. And more to come. God I want to wake up from this national nightmare but can’t. I can’t believe what has happended to my country these last few years. Can we survive it? Can the world?
dougrambo, I’m not so sure the motives are so different. Have you read Bush on the Couch? Some people feel pleasure in inflicting pain on others.
Anyone who comes to this forum to damn the way this nation is being governed and does not devote a portion of every day to passionate political activism … should just shut up.
Because if you don’t you’re nothing but voyeurs. And all your hopelessness hysterics is pathetic, self-excusing crap.
Operatic whining. The scumbags running this country are doing so not just because of the rampant ignorance and complacency that are rotting this Republic, but because even people who care and know … do nothing. Squawking online is not DOING SOMETHING. DOING SOMETHING requires the messy, dirty, wearisome work of political action. It’s a DEMOCRACY, people. In a democracy, you only get out as much as you put in, if you’re lucky.