Posted on 08/16/2007 6:07:40 AM PDT by JCG
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The death toll in the suicide bombings Tuesday in northern Iraq has risen to at least 500, local officials in Nineveh province said Wednesday.
Iraqi Army and Mosul police sources earlier put the number at 260, but said it was likely to rise. 320 were reported wounded.
The Tuesday truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a "trademark al Qaeda event" designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, a U.S. general said Wednesday.
The attacks, targeting Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority, were attempts to "break the will" of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation -- the "surge" -- is failing, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon said.
The bombings highlight the kind of sectarian tensions the troop surge was designed to stop.
Al Qaeda in Iraq is predominantly Sunni, and Mixon said members of the Yazidi religious minority have received threatening letters, called "night letters," telling them "to leave because they are infidels."
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will -- almost genocide when you consider the fact the target they attacked and the fact that these Yazidis, out in a very remote part of Nineveh province, where there is very little security and really no security required to this point," Mixon said.
Sunni militants, including members of al Qaeda in Iraq, have targeted Yazidis in the area before.
Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said there were three suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed.
Khalaf said the carnage looks like the aftermath of a "mini-nuclear explosion." More bodies are expected to be found.
The U.S. military said there were five bombings -- four at a crowded bus station in Qahtaniya and a fifth in al-Jazeera.
The massacre comes ahead of next month's report to Congress by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on progress in Iraq.
"We still have a great deal of work to do against al Qaeda in Iraq, and we have great deal of work to do against al Qaeda networks in northern Iraq," Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, said Wednesday.
The office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki blamed Sunni extremists for the "monstrous crime." He said a committee has been formed to investigate.
Ashraf Qazi, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Iraq, called the attack an "abominable crime aimed at widening the sectarian and ethnic divide in Iraq."
Qazi urged Iraqi authorities to bolster their efforts to protect minorities.
The Yazidi sect is a mainly Kurdish minority, an ancient group that worships seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe.
A couple of related incidents in the spring highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis.
In April, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was brutally beaten, kicked and stoned to death in northern Iraq by other Yazidis in what authorities said was an "honor killing" after she was seen with a Sunni Muslim man. Although she had not married him or converted, her attackers believed she had.
The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another faith.
That killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later.
Attackers affiliated with al Qaeda pulled 24 Yazidi men out of a bus and slaughtered them, according to a provincial official.
Glad to know these bastards have been killed yesterday
While no group of any people is “all alike” I have been troubled by that video. It’s a real challenge to overcome the revulsion one feels after watching. That said, I agree with you - whether they are all like that or not does not justify a cowardly truck bomb being placed in their midst.
Stay safe!
This attack may change their minds. Since it occurred in an area where there are very few, if any, Americans at all, it may give the Iraqis who want us out a taste of what would happen if we just packed up and left.
Neither will I but it wasn't AQ that stoned that poor girl to death. That was rank and file members of the Religion of Peace.
L
Not all Yazidis practice that barbaric crap. I get tired of the "tarring with the same brush" syndrome you see so often here on FR.
I vehemently do not condone al Qaeda'a actions.
Every car bomb is a conduit directly to the America-haters to apply more pressure to declare the war loss.
Granted. But enough of them are apparently willing to tolerate it so that large numbers of their brethren don't seem to fear the consequences of stoning a young girl to death publicly.
I get tired of the "tarring with the same brush" syndrome you see so often here on FR.
That would die down a lot faster if a few village elders and clan chiefs made it clear that the old ways are gone and that these mohamedens had better start living up to that 'peaceful religion' claptrap they keep telling me about.
I vehemently do not condone al Qaeda'a actions.
I never said you did and I certainly don't either.
The only thing that's justified is speedy arrest, trials, convictions, and hangings of everyone involved in that poor girls death.
L
Source of that information?
Why is it odd that you haven’t seen video of this? Do you actually think journalists all over the country and not holed up in the Green Zone.
Terrorists can do this any time they want regardless how seriously 95% of the population is really tired of this. It would not be a valid indicator of how the war is going.
I'm far too buoyant to get bogged down in some pointless argument about semantics.
I made my point and I made it clearly. Those who want to skew my remarks just for the sake of argument, have at it. I'm not going to play.
I'm taking a break from the war.
All the wars.
I will now return to my levity and disengagement.
Hoist a pint or two for me.
I bid you a pleasant day.
L
I have seen your page before. I’m sorry my French Friend. I put my foot in my mouth!
It would be non-alcoholic from Kuwait.
It will have to wait until I have ventured a little farther west.
I thought you were heading for London? Oh well, where ever you are I have no doubt that that is the place to be.
Have a safe trip.
L
I am. Can't get there directly from Iraq. I had to stay here for 24-48 hours due to the visa process. On my way out in less than 24 hours.
Woo hooo!
Have fun!
Best,
L
I’m sure they’d love to have their country back to themselves, however, I’m sure they also understand that they have a lot more work to do before they can take that on. They don’t hate America; they just want their lives returned to some semblance of normal.
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