The death toll of Tuesday night's attack by four suicide bombers near the Syrian border in Iraq has reached 250 and may be as high as 500, according to reports.
The site of a suicide bomb attack in village of Kahtaniya, one of two villages struck on Tuesday by garbage trucks packed with explosives, northwest of Bagdad. Pic: Reuters/Thaier al-Sudani
The victims of Tuesday night's co-ordinated attack were Yazidis, a small Kurdish-speaking sect that has been targeted by Muslim extremists who consider its members to be blasphemers.
The blasts in two villages near the Syrian border saw entire neighbourhoods were flattened. Angry members of the minority sect said today they feared annihilation.
Frail clay houses in the centre of Kahtaniya, one of two villages struck on Tuesday by garbage trucks packed with explosives, were flattened for several blocks.
Chunks of concrete and twisted aluminium lay in the street beside the destroyed homes of hundreds of Yazidis, a minority sect regarded by Sunni militants as infidels.
"Their aim is to annihilate us, to create trouble and kill all the Yazidis because we are not Muslims," said Abu Saeed, a resident of Kahtaniya.
Mr Saeed told deputy prime minister Barham Salih, who made a short tour of the devastation, that 51 members of his extended family had been killed. About 100 angry Yazidi men gathered as Mr Salih met local officials.
"It's like a nuclear site, the site of a nuclear bomb," Mr Salih, a Kurd, said.
"This is an act of ethnic cleansing...almost genocide," Maj Gen Benjamin Mixon, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, said.
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 Shia Muslim enclave of Sadr City last November 23rd.
The latest attack dealt a serious blow to the Bush administration's hopes of presenting a positive picture in a progress report on Iraq to be delivered by the senior US commander, Gen David Petraeus, and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker in about four weeks.
Minority sects such as the Yazidis are especially vulnerable as militants seek new targets to avoid the strict security measures in Baghdad and surrounding areas to stop violence among warring Sunni and Shia factions.
The only Yazidi legislator in Iraq's 275-seat parliament called on the government to do more to protect the country's small communities.
Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurdish and Shi'ite leaders formed an alliance today to support prime minister Nuri al-Maliki's government but failed to bring in Sunni leaders who are crucial to national reconciliation.
Mr Maliki is facing a political crisis after the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, pulled its six ministers out of his Shi'ite-led national unity government saying it had ignored their demands.
The new alliance includes the two main Kurdish parties in the government, the powerful Shi'ite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and Maliki's Shi'ite Dawa party.
But it failed to bring in the Islamic Party, the biggest single Sunni Arab party in parliament.
Talks to form an alliance began last year with the Islamic Party but broke down over its demand that it be given a greater say in security matters.