surge update - 21 Die in Bombing in Northern Iraq

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BAGHDAD -- Two bombers wearing suicide vests blew themselves up in a popular cafe crowded with young people in northwestern Iraq on Thursday evening, killing 21 and wounding 30 others, according to local hospital officials.

It is the third major bombing in a stretch 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 pre-Islamic 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 American invasion in 2003, when four trucks laden with explosives detonated nearly simultaneously, killing 313 and wounding 704 more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?hp=&pagewanted=print