Death toll headed to 500 in northern Iraq (2nd Roundup)

Aug 15, 2007, 23:39 GMT

REFILE (eca222): 2ND ROUNDUP: Death toll headed to 500 in northern Iraq Eds: Restores missing word from headline; Updates eca 140, recasts lead for early Thursday; epa photos 00000401091570 available; see also background pieces eca 008 and eca 122 from Wednesday =

Baghdad (dpa) - Rescue workers continued late Wednesday to dig through rubble from four massive explosions in northern Iraq, near the Syrian border, where the death toll continued to climb dramatically, and could reach 500, local sources said.

The correspondent of the Arabic news broadcaster Al-Jazeera and the US station CNN quoted the figure based on numbers from local doctors and hospitals and from local officials.

The attacks on Tuesday, blamed by US military officials on al- Qaeda terrorists because they carried the trademark of simultaneous explosions, targetted four sites in villages 120 kilometres north of Mosul, news reports said.

One US military official, Major General Benjamin Mixon, told CNN the killings represented 'almost genocide' because they targetted the Yazidi sect who constituted most of the victims. The Yazidis, a religious sect whose followers are concentrated in northern Iraq, live in villages around Mosul. They do not follow the tenets of Islam.

Hundreds were injured in the attacks.

The attacks drew international condemnation. In Washington, US officials called the bombings 'barbaric.'

In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he was 'shocked and saddened' and made an 'urgent' call for Iraqi leaders to put aside political and religious differences and 'work together to protect civilian lives.'

'Nothing can justify such indiscriminate violence against innocent civilians,' Ban said in a statement.

The Arbil-based correspondent of al-Jazeera said that he had been told by the head of Sinjar district's hospital that the death toll had reached 500. But the figures remained unconfirmed by authorities.

Two trucks rigged with explosives were detonated simultaneously in the Siba Sheikh Khidr housing compound Tuesday night while two more explosions occurred in the nearby Kar Izir area, also in Sinjar, causing many buildings to collapse.

Broadcast reports said the trucks used in the explosions were tankers carrying fuel and water for distribution to the local population. According to Oweid Ahmed, a policeman from Sinjar, one of the vehicles was an explosive-laden fuel tanker. It was not yet clear whether any of the bombings were performed by suicide attackers.

Official Kurdish sources put the number of those dead at 350, according to al-Jazeera, while 220 people killed and 400 wounded remained the latest official figure disclosed by the Iraqi army on Wednesday.

The apparently coordinated bombings close to the city of Mosul rank among the worst terrorist attacks in Iraq since a US-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.

According to the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI), a curfew on vehicles was imposed in the town of Sinjar, where the attacks happened, and it will remain in effect until further notice.

'This morning our hospital received more than 50 wounded,' said Raad Abdel-Karim, a resident doctor in a nearby hospital. 'We expect to take in more than 80 more. Many of them are in a stable condition. Most of the injured that were transferred here are women and children.'

The condition of some of the wounded remained critical, according to police sources. Many had to be transferred to hospitals in Kirkuk and Dahouk in the autonomous Kurdish region, as Sinjar's hospitals did not have enough capacity to deal with the deluge of injured victims.

Dakheel Qasem Hassoun, Sinjar's mayor, told VOI that 30 bodies were 'torn apart' in the explosions.

The targeted housing compound, home to 15,000 people, reportedly also came under a mortar attack following the triple explosion.

British broadcaster BBC reported earlier that there had been rising tension recently between Yazidis and Muslims in the area north-west of Mosul. The latest issues had arisen from the reported stoning in April by Yazidis of a girl from their community who had converted to Islam.

Meanwhile, the US military reported that five servicemen were killed on Tuesday when a helicopter crashed in the vicinity of Taqaddum Air Base in the western province of Anbar.

In other news, US troops reported the capture Tuesday of a militia leader suspected of commanding 150 'Shiite extremists'.

The suspect, who was captured Tuesday in a joint US-Iraqi operation in the central Iraqi city of Najaf, was said to have formed his own militia group after splitting off from the Shiite Mahdi Army group.

Doctors in the Kurdish city of Sulaymanyah announced that a mass grave containing 33 bodies was discovered in the town of Khanakin, 167 kilometres north-east of Baghdad.

The grave is believed to date from the brutal suppression by the late dictator Saddam Hussein of the 1991 Kurdish uprising against his regime.

Most of the bodies were found dressed in traditional Kurdish clothing and blindfolded.