IRAQ: US military says al-Qaeda responsible for suicide bombs that killed 200

The U.S. military has blamed al Qaeda for suicide bomb attacks on a minority sect that killed 200 people in northwestern Iraq. The U.S. military said on Wednesday (August 15) al Qaeda was the prime suspect in suicide bomb attacks on a minority sect that killed 200 people in northwestern Iraq. "This attack, the spectacular nature of it, the complete disregard for human life, the car bomb, car bombs that were used all have a consistent profile with al Qaeda in Iraq violence." U.S. military spokesman Kevin Bergner told journalists in Baghdad. There were up to five simultaneous car bomb attacks overnight. The attackers, driving fuel tankers, struck densely populated residential areas west of the city of Mosul that are home to members of the Yazidi sect, whose followers are considered infidels by Sunni Islamist militant groups. The U.S. military said it was too early to say who was responsible, but the scale and apparently coordinated nature of the bombings wore the hallmarks of Sunni Islamist al Qaeda. The mayor of the district of Sinjar, Dakheel Qassim Hasoun, said 200 people had been killed. The remoteness of the area made it difficult to get details of the attacks or the number of casualties. If confirmed, the death toll would be the highest in any one attack since November, when six car bombs in different parts of Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City district killed 200 people and wounded 250. Car bombs killed 191 around Baghdad on one day in April. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) condemned "the cowardly and barbaric attack against innocent civilians of this tolerant religious minority". In the aftermath of the blast, authorities imposed a total curfew in the Sinjar area, which is close to the Syrian border. Iraqi authorities said the death toll was so high because most of the destroyed houses, tightly packed in three Yazidi residential compounds, were made of mud that shattered with the force of the blasts. The U.S. military said five vehicle-borne bombs had been detonated in Yazidi residential compounds in the villages of Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera. Jaad said the village of Tal Uzair was also hit. Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect who live in northern Iraq and Syria. Sunni militants have kidnapped and killed many in recent months. In April, gunmen shot dead 23 Yazidi factory workers in Mosul in apparent retaliation for the stoning several weeks earlier of a teenaged Yazidi girl who police said fell in love with a Sunni Arab and converted to Islam. Yazidis in Iraq say they have often faced persecution because the chief angel they venerate as a manifestation of God is often identified as the fallen angel Satan.

ITN Source | August 15, 2007

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