Death toll from Iraq bombings may reach 500

[marmar]

from McClatchy Newspapers, via the Santa Barbara News-Press:


Death toll from Iraq bombings may reach 500
Leila Fadel and Yasseen Taha



August 15, 2007 4:38 PM

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

BAGHDAD - Officials said Wednesday that as many as 500 people probably died in a series of coordinated truck bombings that devastated two northern Iraqi villages Tuesday and set a record for mass carnage in war-torn Iraq.

Residents and rescue workers in Tal al-Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar, two villages near the Syrian border in Nineveh province, spent Wednesday pulling the dead and wounded from the rubble of clay homes that had collapsed when the massive bombs exploded.

The confirmed death toll was at least 250 and climbing, officials said. Five hundred more were wounded, many critically. More than 100 one-story homes and shops were destroyed by the blasts.

Rescue workers set up tents on a highway between the cities of Dohuk and Mosul to house the wounded after health ministry officials said area hospitals were full. The area of devastation in one of the villages measured a half-mile in diameter.

''We cannot identify at least 60 bodies for which there is evidence because there's nothing but strips of flesh as a result of the strength of the blast,'' said Dakhil Qassim, the mayor of the Sinjar district, where the two towns are located. ''I do not expect the rescue teams to finish their search for bodies today.''

Dr. Ziryan Othman, the minister of health for the Kurdistan region, likened the devastation to a natural disaster.

''What took place in Tal al-Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar was a vast volcano in humanitarian terms that shook the area,'' he said. ''Many of the injured are in need of in-depth treatment.''

The expected death toll dwarfs Iraq's previous deadliest series of bombings, which killed 215 people in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim enclave of Sadr City on Nov. 23. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=WORLD&ID=565069661785686306

[EFerrari]

1. This is so horrible.

:(

[Lint Head]

2. Boy that surge is going great is'nt it.

:dem:

[billyoc]

3. Can you imagine coming upon a scene like that.

I really wonder if I could even keep my sanity.

[thunder rising]

4. To the one God that all Muslims, Jews and Christians agree exists

please abide those souls on their way to you. A few years ago, 3000 others were sent to you by a larger scale but no more evil an act. And in response and at our bidding we have sent so many. Forgive them, forgive us, we are but cogs in a machine that kills and kills and kills.

[hedgehog]

5. I'm not certain that this has anything to do with the US presence

beyond the fact that bomb making has become a local skill.