BAGHDAD (Aug. 14) - Four suicide bombers struck at communities of a small Kurdish sect in northwestern Iraq with nearly simultaneous attacks Tuesday, killing at least 175 people and wounding 200 more, Iraqi military and local officials said.
The death toll was the highest in a concerted attack since Nov. 23, when 215 people were killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City. And it was most vicious attack yet against the Yazidis, an ancient religious community in the region whose members are considered infidels by some Muslims.

The bombings came as extremists staged other bold attacks: leveling a key bridge outside Baghdad and abducting five officials from an Oil Ministry compound in the capital in a raid using gunmen dressed as security officers.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, sought to press its gains against guerrillas. Some 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers began a sweep through the Diyala River valley north of Baghdad in pursuit of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia fighters driven out of strongholds in recent weeks.

U.S. officials believe extremists are attempting to regroup across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad. Such a retrenching could increase pressure on small communities such as the Yazidi sect, a primarily Kurdish group with ancient roots that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians.

The Islamic State in Iraq, an al-Qaida front group, distributed leaflets a week ago warning residents near the scene of Tuesday's bombings that an attack was imminent because Yazidis are "anti-Islamic."

The sect was under fire after some members stoned a Yazidi teenager to death in April. She had converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend. Police said 18-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad was killed by relatives who disapproved of the match.

A grainy video showing gruesome scenes of the woman's killing was later distributed on Iraqi Web sites. Its authenticity could not be independently verified, but recent attacks on Yazidis have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked Sunni insurgents seeking revenge.

The suicide attacks came just after sundown near Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, said Abdul-Rahman al-Shimiri, the top government official in the area, and Iraq army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed.

At least one of the trucks was an explosives-laden fuel tanker, police said. Shops were set ablaze and apartment buildings were reported crumbled by the powerful explosions.

Witnesses said U.S. helicopters swooped in to evacuate wounded to hospitals in Dahuk, a Kurdish city near the Turkish border about 60 miles north of Qahataniya. Civilian cars and ambulances also rushed injured to hospitals in Dahuk, police said.

"I gave blood. I saw many maimed people with no legs or hands," said Ghassan Salim, a 40-year-old Yazidi teacher who went to a hospital to donate blood. "Many of the wounded were left in the hospital garage or in the streets because the hospital is small."

There was no claim of responsibility, but the attack bore the hallmark of al-Qaida in Iraq, which has been regrouping in the north after being driven from safe havens in Anbar and Diyala provinces.

"This is a terrorist act and the people targeted are poor Yazidis who have nothing to do with the armed conflict," said Dhakil Qassim, mayor of Sinjar, a town near the attacks.

He blamed al-Qaida in Iraq, citing what he said were intelligence reports from the Kurdish regional government. "Al-Qaida fighters are very active in this area near the Syrian border."

Two weeks after the Yazidi woman was stone to death, gunmen killed 23 Yazidis execution-style after stopping their bus and separating out followers of other faiths in what was believed to have been retaliation for the woman's death.

The bodies of two Yazidi men who had been stoned to death turned up in the morgue in the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, six days after they had been kidnapped while en route to Baghdad to sell olives, police said.

"We are still paying the price of a foolish, wrong act conducted by small number of Yazidis who stoned the woman," said 44-year-old Sami Benda, a relative of one of the slain men.

The center of the Yazidi faith is around Mosul, but smaller communities exist in Turkey, Syria and other places.

Baghdad was spared major violence in another sign that a six-month-old security crackdown in the capital is disrupting extremists' firepower. But the brazen daylight raid on the Oil Ministry complex showed that armed gangs can still embarrass authorities.

Dozens of gunmen wearing security force uniforms stormed the compound and abducted a deputy oil minister and four other officials who were spirited away in a convoy of military-style vehicles.

The kidnappings - similar to a commando-like raid on Iraq's Finance Ministry in May - included Abdel-Jabar al-Wagaa, a senior assistant to Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, said Assem Jihad, the oil ministry spokesman.

Al-Wagaa and four other officials with the State Oil Marketing Organization were taken away by more than 50 gunmen in military-style vehicles, said an Interior Minister official, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to release the information. Five bodyguards were wounded in the raid, the official said.

On May 29, five Britons were seized in a similar raid on Iraq's Finance Ministry. They were taken by gunmen wearing police uniforms and have not been found.

Both government organizations are near Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The raids were reminiscent of an attack by Mahdi Army fighters, dressed as Interior Ministry commandos, who stormed a Higher Education Ministry office Nov. 14 and carried off as many as 200 people. Dozens of those kidnap victims were never been found.

Just north of the capital, a suicide truck bomber devastated a key bridge on the highway linking Baghdad with Mosul. Police said at least 10 people died. The Thiraa Dijla bridge in Taji _ near a U.S. air base 12 miles north of the capital _ also was bombed three months ago, leaving only one lane open.

In western Iraq, a U.S. transport helicopter crashed near an air base, killing five troopers, the military said. The CH-47 Chinook helicopter was conducting a routine post-maintenance test flight when it went down near Taqaddum air base, the U.S. military said.

Four other U.S. soldiers were reported killed in combat _ three in an explosion near their vehicle Monday in the northwestern Ninevah province. The fourth died of wounds suffered in western Baghdad.

The deaths raised to at least 3,700 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The violence punctuated a day when 16,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers began a sweep through the Diyala River valley in a new operation north of Baghdad in pursuit of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen driven out of Baqouba and Anbar province over the past several weeks.

Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a military spokesman in northern Iraq, said the force included 10,000 Americans and 6,000 Iraqis. He said U.S. aircraft used more than 30,000 pounds of munitions to block routes and destroy known and suspected heavy machine gun positions.

The Air Force also dropped 9,000 pounds of bombs to attack an al-Qaida in Iraq training camp, which included bunkers, living quarters, weapons and ammunition caches, Donnelly said.

Three suspected militants had been killed and four booby-trapped houses destroyed, he said, citing preliminary reports.

In Washington, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the new operation was one in a series planned over the next 30 days to try to blunt expected attempts by al-Qaida in Iraq to influence events during "this critical period" as the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, plans his assessment for Congress .

"We fully expect that al-Qaida in Iraq would like to increase their attacks during this critical period," Whitman said Tuesday.

"And this increased intensity in offensive operations ... will take the fight to the enemy with the purpose of improving the overall security situation in Baghdad" as well as increase "pressure on al-Qaida in Iraq countrywide and prevent the enemy from conducting their own operations."

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sameer N. Yacoub and Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report.

i wasn't a supporter of leaving afghanistan and refocusing on iraq in the first place. if the iraqi government was sincere about leading their country i'd say stay and help them get their footing but i don't think that their government is sincere about it and i would rather have us pull out and leave them to sort out their own issues on their own rather than risk the lives of the U.S. military.

if they don't fight for their own independence will they ever appreciate how special it is?

I have a young man, as do others that just joined the Army. They are saying that he might be going to Baghdad or Iraq. He and my daughter are expecting their first child next month. He is 19. He isn't even old enough to drink.

I honestly believe that Bush is to stupid to admit that he screwed up and bring our people home. There is nothing left for us to do. They need to learn to take care of their own country. It's been long enough. They are starting to fight back, LET THEM FIGHT THEIR OWN FLIPPIN WAR!

Sorry, just a little emotional over this. I don't normally go off on this type stuff. I am just worried about my family.

I have a son in the National Guard. This crap scares me but I don't let him see that. He's young and has this invinceable attitude.

...we are still there cause were not done with the job yet.... hello?

QUOTE:

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sameer N. Yacoub and Yahya Barzanji contributed to this report.




Of course they did!

My daughter went to see him (even though she is on resticted travel from OK to MO) graduate. He showed no emotion, didn't act like he was happy to see any of them (her or his parents), and now my daughter is totally worried about him and what's going on. She is new to the military stuff and she don't like it. She said she would be happy if he just came back and worked as a waiter again.

are you happy when your man pulls out before your done? lol

How is our job not done? We have been there, what 5 years and we still haven't done our job? I don't believe that. They need to start rebuilding, and start learning to make it a country they can be proud of. That is not our job. We got Saddam, proved he was a problem and took him out. We did our job. It is time for Iraq, Baghdad and the rest of it, to stand up on their own and grow.

It may be time for that but it won't happen, the country would collapse and be a new safe haven for certain unwanted groups. It's not just about the rebuiding process.

I just don't want to see any more young men and women become widows and widowers because of this thing. There are so many children left behind with no parents. I don't want to see my daughter go through that either.
They need to do what they need to do to get these people ready to defend themselves, which is what they should have been doing all along, not just helping to defend them. They want freedom, they need to work at getting it, just like we do.

They won't, Silk, and that's why I was against the invasion of Iraq. As i've stated in several posts, my prediction of this "adventure" was right on the money. Iraq is now a welfare state. They aren't about to take over the rebuilding of their country. Their leaders, for cryin out loud, are taking the month of August off because, "it's too hot there". But it's OK for American soldiers to be in that heat, protecting your sorry asses, isn't it? And now the neocons say,"we broke it, we have to fix it". Fine. Let's pull our troops home ASAP, and send every last member of the Bush Administration over there to "fix it", along with every Senator and Congressman who voted to go over there in the first place. And while we're at it, let's send the war profiteers there, too. You know, top officials of companies like Halliburton, ect., along with people like Larry the Cable guy, who, to this date, has made exactly ZERO trips to entertain the troops. Even war critics such as Robin Williams and Al franken have made numerous trips there. Of course, considering how badly that piece of trash movie that Larry made did, maybe I really can't call him a war profiteer.

Oh, and Larry the Cable Guy himself said in an interview that he's never made a trip there. Of course, him NOT being there probably helped troop morale more than anything. Hey, why not threaten the terrorists with a free Larry show? Hell, they'd all rather surrender than be subjected to THAT!

we're there to kill as many of them as possible.....that's what an army does kill pll and break things.....



but we could be nice about it and leave, and let them blow up the odd plane or building here and there and do nothing. Maybe that will make them like us.

Gee i hope so....cause it's not like they'd cut off our heads if we gave the opportunity..

Thanks for understanding knox.

i know what they want people to believe but we won't have to fight them over here anymore than if we wouldn't have gone in the first place the idea of fight them here or there was used as a tactic to get people riled up about going into iraq. believe it or not iraq didn't have any involvement in 9/11 and had no alqueda groups before we got there. we should have never left iraq if they wanted to seriously get ahold of terrorists.

sorry, we should have never left afghanistan.

They are not just in Afgh. Look at the USS Cole , where was that, look at the embassy bombings where were those, it all led up to 9/11, if you don't believe the terrorists won't attack on this soil again, you better wake up cause it's coming. Sad but true.

i didn't say they wouldn't attack again. i said they wouldn't attack anymore than if we wouldn't have gone to iraq. going to war in iraq has not made this country any safer.

Davy and Hanged:

The popular mantra is "BAH GAWD, I'd rather fight them over there than over here".

WHAT A FREAKIN' LOAD OF CRAP!!!!!!

For one thing, most of the idiots who say that wouldn't fight them anywhere. For People who constantly repeat that, I say, "It's a volunteer army, fella. Go ahead and join". Funny, but none ever does. If these clowns ever had to fight, they'd soil their drawers in a heartbeat.

Even going by the "rather fight there" ignorant statement, U.S. senior war advisors are reporting that Al-Queida is more powerful than at any time since before 9/11. Also, an attack on U.S. soil is not only probable, but is a certainty.

So much for rather fighting them over there.

we're there because we havent finished building the bases that will keep us there far into the future....and to think they never asked us about it...