400+ killed in Iraq bombings

2007-08-16 14:53

Baghdad - More than 400 people were slaughtered in four suicide truck bomb attacks in northern Iraq targeting the ancient Yazidi religious sect, a top interior ministry official said on Thursday.

"More than 400 people were killed and the toll is expected to rise," the ministry's director of operations, said Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf.

He said more than two tons of explosives were packed into the four bombs that ripped through two villages in Nineveh province late on Tuesday.

Entire families of Yazidis were wiped out after suicide bombers, which the US military said were from al-Qaeda, blew up the lorries full of explosives in the villages of al-Qataniyah and al-Adnaniyah.

Two days after the bombings, rescue teams of hundreds of soldiers, police and civilians were clawing through the devastation of flattened homes, some helping by hand to sift through the rubble looking for the dead.

- AFP