Suicide Fuel Bombers Kill 175 From Iraqi Sect

SUICIDE bombers driving fuel tankers attacked an ancient minority sect in northern Iraq last night, killing at least 175.

Three or four simultaneous blasts targeted areas where members of the Yazidi sect live.

Tensions between the sect and local Muslims have grown since a Yazidi girl was reportedly stoned by her community in April for converting to Islam.

Up to 200 other people were hurt in the blasts, which destroyed or set fire to many buildings.

The death toll was the highest in a concerted attack since November 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City.

Last night’s bombs tore through districts near Kahtaniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, said Abdul-Rahman al- Shimiri, the top government official in the area. He said at least 30 homes were destroyed.

Yazidis are members of a pre- Islamic Kurdish sect and live in northern Iraq and Syria. Yazidis in Iraq say they have often faced discrimination. In April, gunmen shot dead 23 factory workers from the sect in Mosul.

Dhakil Qassim, mayor of Sinjar, a town near where the attacks occurred, said Al Qaeda in Iraq was behind the bombings, citing what he said were Kurdish government intelligence reports.

‘This is a terrorist act and the people targeted are poor Yazidis who have nothing to do with the armed conflict,’ he said.

U.S. helicopters evacuated the wounded to hospitals in Dahuk, a Kurdish city near the Turkish border about 60 miles north of

Qahataniya. Cars and ambulances also took the wounded to hospitals in Dahuk.

Ghassan Salim, a 40-year-old Yazidi teacher who went to Sinjar hospital to donate blood after seeing lines of ambulances and cars carrying the wounded.

‘Many of them were left in the hospital garage or in the streets because the hospital is small,’ he said.

Earlier in the day, five U.S. service personnel were killed when a military transport helicopter crashed 30 miles west of Baghdad.

The U.S. military said the CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed near its al-Taqaddum air base outside Falluja while conducting a ‘routine postmaintenance check flight’.

There was no indication whether it was shot down. An investigation is under way..

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