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Bombs targeting Shiites in Iraq kill at least 45, fears of sectarian strife grow
The attacks provided a grim example of US military warnings that insurgents are targeting Shiites in an effort to re-ignite the kind of sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007.
A double truck bombing tore through the village of a small Shiite ethnic minority near the northern city of Mosul, while blasts in Baghdad Monday also targeted Shiites in a wave of violence that killed at least 45 people and wounded more than 200, Iraqi officials said.
The attacks provided a grim example of US military warnings that insurgents are targeting Shiites in an effort to re-ignite the kind of sectarian violence that nearly tore the country apart in 2006 and 2007. The US military has stressed that despite the rise in attacks, the Shiites are showing restraint and not retaliating as they did more than two years ago when a similar series of attacks and bombings provoked a Shiite backlash that degenerated into a sectarian slaughter claiming tens of thousands of lives.
The US military has stressed that despite the rise in attacks, the Shiites are showing restraint and not retaliating as they did more than two years ago when a similar series of attacks and bombings provoked a Shiite backlash that degenerated into a sectarian slaughter |
The deadliest blast on Monday was a double truck bombing in Khazna village, just east of Mosul, home of the Shabak, a small Shiite ethnic group in the north. The Shabak who have their own distinct language and belief system are part of the mosaic of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq's north that include Yazidis, Assyrian Christians, Turkomen Shiites and Kurds -- all of whom have been targeted in the past by Sunni Arab insurgents.
The two explosives-laden trucks went off nearly simultaneously and less than 500 yards apart, killing at least 28 people and wounding 138, said police and hospital officials. The US military confirmed at least 25 were killed.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents who remain active in Mosul and surrounding areas. Witnesses described a chaotic scene of rescuers searching through the rubble of at least 15 houses that were destroyed. Many of the dead and wounded were sleeping on their roofs because of the summer heat.
 Residents gather at the site of a bomb attack near Mosul, 390 kilometers north of Baghdad. Bomb blasts in Shiite Muslim areas in Baghdad and northern Iraq on Monday killed dozens. |
The explosions left a 7-foot (2 meter) crater and reduced the neighborhood to piles of bricks, twisted metal and smoking debris. Family members pulled the wounded from the debris and carried them to safety, as ambulances wailed through the neighborhood.
Women sat on mounds of rubble crying and the men sifted through the debris trying to recover what belongings they could. Mahmoud Hussein, 28, said he was asleep on a roof, about 150 yards (140 meters) away from the truck bombs, when then explosion flattened his house.
”If we had slept inside, we would have been killed,” said Hussein, who received a head wound from flying debris. Qusay Abbas, who represents the Shabak minority as a member of the Ninevah provincial council, blamed security forces for failing to secure the area on the eastern outskirts of Mosul, which the US has called the last stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
“I blame everyone who wants to divide Iraq, and every sectarian official shoulders responsibility for this crime,” Abbas said. The village was a relatively easy target because it lacked many of the security measures prevalent in larger cities. A similar attack by a suicide truck bomber against a small Turkomen Shiite village on Friday flattened a mosque and killed 44.
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