Insurgents slaughtered another 47 Iraqis on Sunday, including 23 members of a small religious minority dragged from a bus and gunned down by the roadside, security officials said.
The latest day of carnage came as the United States military said it would press on with plans to wall in Baghdad’s worst neighbourhoods despite criticism from residents and many Iraqi leaders.
An American commander also announced plans to recruit more than 40 000 new troops into Iraq’s armed forces in 2007 as part of a $14-billion plan for developing the war-torn country’s security forces.
Unidentified gunmen dragged 23 members of northern Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority from a bus and shot them dead by the roadside, said police Brigadier General Mohammed el-Waqa’a.
“Workers were travelling back from a textile plant in Mosul to their home in Bashika, east of the city,” he said. “Several gunmen stopped the buses, chose the Yazidi among the passengers and killed them in front of everybody.”
Police said a group of cars blocked the road in the al-Nur neighbourhood of east Mosul, while others set up a cordon to protect the gang that stormed the bus convoy. The captives were executed on a field by the road.
Three wounded Yazidis survived, officers said.
The Yazidis, who number about 500 000, mainly in northern Iraq, speak a dialect of Kurdish but follow a pre-Islamic religion and have their own cultural traditions.
They believe in God the creator and respect the Biblical and Qur’anic prophets, especially Abraham, but their main focus of worship is Malak Taus, the chief of the archangels, often represented by a peacock.
Some followers of other religions know this angel as Lucifer or Satan, leading to popular prejudice that the secretive Yazidis are devil-worshippers.
Nevertheless, the ancient community has survived for centuries alongside its Muslim and Christian neighbours. Now, however, with sectarian war gripping much of Iraq, Sunni Muslim extremists have begun to threaten the community.
In Baghdad two car bomb explosions at a police station killed 16 people and wounded 95 others, security officials said.
The bombs struck outside al-Bayaa police station in the south-west of the city. Six of the 16 killed and 40 of the wounded were police officer. The blast tore a massive crater in the road and devastated at least two civilian houses.
Elsewhere eight more people were killed, including six in another car bomb attack in Baghdad.
Iraqi security forces are regular targets of insurgents and Sunday’s twin attack was the latest spectacular blast that insurgents have managed to carry out despite the massive security crackdown in the city.
The US military said insurgents killed three more of its soldiers in and around Baghdad on Saturday, taking to 58 the military’s losses for April alone.– AFP
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