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The barbaric public stoning to death in Iraq of Du'a Khalil Aswad; a 17 year old Kurdish woman of the Yazidi faith - for having converted to Islam to marry a Muslim boy. Reported by Phil Black for CNN.
At present, the death toll stands at 260 with another 320 innocent Iraqi’s seriously wounded. The death toll is expected to rise to 500.
BAGHDAD (AP) – Rescuers used bare hands and shovels to claw through clay houses shattered by an onslaught of suicide bombings that killed at least 250 and possibly as many as 500 members of an ancient religious sect in the deadliest attack of the Iraq war.
Zayan Othman, health minister for Iraq’s nearby autonomous Kurdish region, said 250 bodies had been pulled from the rubble and some 350 people were injured.
But the death toll was put as high as 500 by some local officials, including Hashim al-Hamadani, a senior provincial security official, Kifah Mohammed, director of Sinjar hospital, and Iraqi army Capt. Mohammed Ahmed. They agreed with Othman that about 350 were wounded. The figures could not be independently checked because the area was under curfew and casualties had been taken to numerous hospitals.
Even the lower death estimate far surpassed the previous bloodiest attack of the war — 215 people killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad’s Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City last Nov. 23.
U.S. officials believe insurgents have been regrouping across northern Iraq after being driven from strongholds in and around Baghdad, and the bombings coincided with the start of a major offensive by American and Iraqi troops against militants in the Diyala River Valley.
A SERIOUS BLOW TO BUSH AND PETRAEUS’ PRESENTATION
The carnage dealt a serious blow to the Bush administrations hopes of presenting a positive picture in a progress report on Iraq to be delivered by the top U.S. commander, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker in about four weeks.
Petraeus warned that he expected Sunni Arab insurgents to stage more spectacular attacks ahead of the report to Congress, whose members are deeply divided over whether to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.
“This is way out by the Syrian border, an area where we do think in fact some suicide bombers are able to come across the border. It’s an area that is very, very remote — quite small villages out there — and it was disheartening for us, too, obviously,” Petraeus told The Associated Press in an interview.
“We’ve always said al-Qaida would try to carry out sensational attacks this month in particular,” he added. “We’ve had some success against them in certain areas, but we’ve also said they do retain the capability to carry out these horrific and indiscriminate attacks such as the ones yesterday. There will be more of that, tragically.”
YAZIDIS A RELIGIOUS MINORITY “ANTI-ISLAMIC”
Minority sects such as the Yazidis are especially vulnerable as militants seek new targets to avoid the strict security measures clamped on Baghdad and surrounding areas to stop violence among warring Sunni and Shiite factions.
Some Muslims and Christians consider an angel figure worshipped by Yazidis to be the devil, a charge the sect denies. 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 also gained unwanted attention when some members stoned an 17-year-old Yazidi woman to death in April after she converted to Islam and fled her family with a Muslim boyfriend. Recent attacks on Yazidis have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked Sunni extremists seeking to avenge her death.
The only Yazidi legislator in Iraq’s 275-seat parliament called on the government to do more to protect the country’s small communities.
“The ethnic and religious minorities do not have militias while all the powerful parties have strong militias in Iraq,” Amin Farhan said. “The government should protect these minorities by giving them weapons so that they can confront the terrorist groups.”
HORROR OF CASUALTIES: WOMEN AND CHILDREN
Officials in northwestern Iraq called on people to donate blood and pleaded for aid as many families were left homeless after their houses collapsed in the bombings near Sinjar.
“The residents are appealing now to governmental and non-governmental organizations to help them with medicines, food, water and tents,” Farhan said. “About 50 houses have completely collapsed over their families. Many of the victims have been badly dismembered. Rescuers are only finding pieces of dead bodies.”
Dakhil Qassim, the Sinjar mayor, said the four truck bombers approached two areas in the town of Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul, from dirt roads and all exploded within minutes of each other. He said the casualty toll was expected to rise.
“We are still digging with our hands and shovels because we can’t use cranes because many of the houses were built of clay,” Qassim said.
Hospitals across the region were overwhelmed and only emergency vehicles were exempt from a curfew that was in place across towns west of Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad.
Nurses dabbed the bloodied face of a young boy and held his hand as he wailed in pain. A toddler with bruised eyes had bandages wrapped around his head and arms.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
