Gunmen stormed a Sunni district in the north-western Iraqi town of Tal Afar overnight, killing dozens in apparent reprisal for deadly truck bombings in a Shi’ite area, Iraqi officials said on Wednesday.
Police, military and health officials said as many as 50 men were killed in the attack on the Sunni district of al-Wahda in the volatile town, whose residents are a mixture of Shi’ites, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen, near the Syrian border,
”I wish you can come and see all the bodies. They are lying in the grounds. We don’t have enough space in the hospital. All of the victims were shot in the head,” a doctor at the main hospital told Reuters by telephone.
”No less than 45 people were killed. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life,” said the doctor, who refused to be named because he said he feared for his life.
Police and military officials said 50 had been killed when gunmen rampaged through the neighbourhood on Tuesday evening. They said all the victims were men.
The attacks follow an upsurge in violence in Baghdad and outside the capital in recent days. United States and Iraqi security forces have deployed thousands more soldiers in Baghdad to try to stem a sectarian war threatening to tear the country apart.
In Tuesday’s truck bombings in Tal Afar, one suicide bomber lured victims to buy wheat loaded on his truck in a Shi’ite neighbourhood. A second truck bomb exploded in a used car lot. The attacks killed 55 people and wounded 185.
In 2006, US President George Bush held up Tal Afar as an example of progress being made in Iraq after US-led forces freed it from al-Qaeda in an offensive the previous year. – Reuters