Cafe bombing kills 21 in Iraq
Attackers target religious minority
BAGHDAD - Two bombers wearing suicide vests blew themselves up in a popular cafe crowded with young people in northwestern Iraq yesterday, killing 21 and wounding 30 others, local hospital officials said.
It is the third major bombing in an area of Iraq in and around the violent city of Mosul, where ethnic tensions, insurgent activity, and political disputes have created a volatile mix that threatens the security gains made elsewhere in the country.
The attack was carried out in the city of Sinjar, which is populated primarily by Yazidis, Kurdish-speaking followers of a preIslamic faith with its roots in Zoroastrianism that remains based in an area near the Syrian border.
Viewed as apostates by Sunni extremists, the Yazidis have been the victims of attacks in the past.
Two years ago, a Yazidi village near Sinjar was devastated by one of the worst bombings in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, when four trucks laden with explosives detonated nearly simultaneously, killing 313 and wounding 704 more.
Following the attacks, Kurdish forces moved into the area and made a fortress of Sinjar and the surrounding villages, erecting earthen berms and establishing checkpoints even though the area is not a part of Kurdistan. Control over the area is one of the many flashpoints that continue to inflame Kurdish-Arab tensions.
No group claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, which followed a series of bombings in the region around Mosul this week. On Monday, twin truck bombs flattened the Shi’ite village of Khazna, killing 38 people, wounding more than 200, and destroying dozens of homes.
The bomb site presented a familiar scene of carnage in Iraq, where the difference between life and death could hang on something as simple as stepping outside to take a phone call.
Which is precisely what happened with Salem Dakhou, 37, who was fortunate enough to receive a call just before the bomb went off.
“I went outside then I heard the explosion,’’ he said. “I could not see anything it was so white. It smelled like gunpowder and burned flesh.’’
The second explosion, he said, sent him flying.
“I was bleeding,’’ he said. “Then I saw a man on fire running. I tried to help him but I couldn’t get up. Then he died.’’
