Truck Bombs Kill 175 in Iraq's North
Religious Sect Targeted By 4 Coordinated Blasts

By Megan Greenwell and Dlovan Brwari
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 15, 2007

BAGHDAD, Aug. 14 -- At least 175 people were killed Tuesday night by four truck bombs in a massive coordinated attack against members of a small religious sect, the Yazidis, in northern Iraq, the Iraqi army said.

The nearly simultaneous explosions, in three Yazidi communities near the town of Sinjar, added up to the deadliest attack in Iraq this year and one of the most lethal since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Hundreds of wounded people were flown or driven to hospitals, overwhelming every emergency room in the region, according to George Shlimon, vice mayor of the nearby city of Dahuk.

In Baghdad, the U.S. military reported the deaths of nine American military personnel in three incidents, including the crash of a twin-rotor Chinook helicopter. A truck bomb rendered impassable a bridge on a major route from Baghdad to the north.

Khidr Farhan was on his way to buy vegetables when the first truck bomb exploded near the market in his tiny Yazidi enclave. "I found myself flying through the air, and my face was burning," he said from his hospital bed in Dahuk, where he was recovering from a concussion, a broken leg and a broken rib.

"I felt my leg hurting, and I knew my head was bleeding," he said. "Then I couldn't feel anything. When I woke up, I was in the hospital."

During an interview with a Washington Post special correspondent, Farhan began to cry. "Where is my family?" he said. "I left my wife and my four children at home. Did they die?"

Haji Sido was driving from his workplace to his home in the Tall Aziz community when another of the bombs exploded there. He was not injured, but most of the mud-walled huts in the village collapsed and dead bodies littered the ground, he recounted.

"I ran past people screaming on the ground," he said. "I didn't care, because I had to get to my family. When I got home, my wife said: 'Calm down and thank God. We are safe.' "

Like other recent, large-scale bombing attacks, Tuesday's took place in an area with a relatively small military presence. Since the United States sent an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq this year, insurgents have increasingly targeted areas outside military control. Last month, a bombing near the city of Kirkuk -- another northern city that did not receive additional troops -- killed about 150 people.

The Yazidis are an ancient group whose faith combines elements of many historical religions of the region. They worship a peacock archangel and are considered Satanists by some Muslims and Christians in Iraq, a characterization they reject.

Yazidis largely live apart from other Iraqis, in villages near the Syrian border, to maintain religious purity, and they are forbidden to fraternize with other groups. Most Yazidis speak Kurdish but object to being called Kurds.

Despite such isolation, tensions among the Yazidis, Muslim Kurds and Arab groups in northern Iraq have led to increasingly violent incidents. In April, a 17-year-old Yazidi girl was stoned to death after she eloped with a Sunni Muslim man and converted to Islam. Cellphone video footage of her death, called an "honor killing" by other Yazidis, was broadcast widely on the Internet, setting off a wave of attacks against the group.

Two weeks later, 23 Yazidi factory workers were dragged off a bus and executed in Mosul in apparent retaliation for the teenager's death. Police attributed the attack to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

No one asserted responsibility for Tuesday's bombings. Khairi Bozani, a Yazidi who lives in Sinjar, called them the most recent step in a campaign by other Iraqi groups to drive Yazidis out of the country. "They are trying to finish the Yazidis," Bozani said. "If the girl hadn't been killed, they would have found another excuse to attack us."

In Anbar province Tuesday, five Americans died when the Chinook helicopter went down during a training flight, the military said. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

Three other U.S. soldiers were killed Monday by a roadside bomb in the province of Nineveh, in northwestern Iraq, officials said, while one was killed in combat in western Baghdad.

The bridge that was hit by a truck bomb was located in Taji, north of Baghdad.

The vehicle, a fuel tanker, had just passed through an Iraqi army checkpoint about 8:30 a.m. when it detonated on the bridge. The blast killed 10 people and sent three cars plunging into a canal that joins the Tigris River, authorities said. It also destroyed the northern section of the bridge.

The bridge had been operating with only one lane since a bombing in May. It is part of an important artery between Baghdad and Mosul, the biggest city in the north.

In recent months, suicide bombers have repeatedly attacked key bridges around the capital in an attempt to disrupt road traffic and isolate the city. In April, a truck bomb destroyed a large portion of the historic Sarafiya bridge over the Tigris River; on Sunday, a replacement floating span was officially opened.

Also Tuesday, a deputy oil minister was kidnapped by armed men at his home in the Oil Ministry compound in eastern Baghdad, according to ministry spokesman Assem Jihad. Abdel Jabar al-Wagaa, the senior assistant to Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, was seized along with several other ministry staff members, Jihad said.

The abduction was carried out by gunmen wearing Iraqi security force uniforms who entered the compound late Tuesday afternoon in more than a dozen official vehicles, according to the spokesman.

On May 29, five Britons were kidnapped from the nearby Finance Ministry. No group has asserted responsibility for either incident, and the victims have not been located.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced that it has begun a major new offensive involving 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. Operation Lightning Hammer is targeting fighters of al-Qaeda in Iraq in the areas surrounding Baqubah, the capital of Diyala.

The number of bombings in Baqubah and Baghdad has declined significantly since 30,000 additional U.S. troops arrived in Iraq this year. But large-scale attacks in smaller towns and rural areas have led some observers to conclude that insurgent groups have merely relocated.

In an interview last week, Brig. Gen. John M. "Mick" Bednarek, who has led the military operation in Baqubah, said that the city has been largely stabilized and that many of the 10,000 troops there would be used to expand the U.S. presence elsewhere in Diyala.

Talks among Iraq's top political leaders continued Tuesday at a summit that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said he hopes can repair his fractured government.

Maliki did not speak publicly after Tuesday's meetings, but other leaders said the discussions are to continue Wednesday.

Brwari reported from Mosul. Special correspondents Naseer Nouri and Dalya Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.