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BAGHDAD - Suicide bombers driving fuel tankers have killed at least 175 people in apparently coordinated attacks in northwestern Iraq, the Iraqi army said, in one of the worst incidents of its kind in the four-year-old war.
Iraqi army captain Mohammad al-Jaad said at least another 200 people were wounded in the bombings in Yazidi residential compounds in the Kahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair areas near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, close to the Syrian border.
The mayor of Sinjar, Dakheel Qassim Hasoun, gave the same casualty figures.
Police said the bombings appeared to target the Yazidis, members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect who live in northern Iraq and Syria.
The United States has sent an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq this year and moved them from large bases into small neighborhood outposts in an effort to reduce sectarian violence in the capital and surrounding provinces.
The United States condemned the bombings as "barbaric attacks on innocent civilians," and extended its sympathies to families of the victims.
"Extremists continue to show to what lengths they will go to stop Iraq from becoming a stable and secure country," the White House said in a statement.
"We will continue to work with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Security Forces to stabilize the country and beat back these vicious and heartless murderers."
The US military said it was helping to ferry wounded to hospitals in the town of Tal Afar.
First Lieutenant Stephen Bomar, spokesman for the 25th Infantry Division, said initial reports suggested 30 people were killed and 60 wounded in attacks by two suicide bombers.
In November 2006, six car bombs in different parts of northeast Baghdad's sprawling Shi'ite slum of Sadr City killed 202 people and wounded 250, while multiple car bombs around the capital killed 191 around Baghdad in April.
In the worst single attack this year, a truck packed with explosives blew up in a market in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato in July, killing 150 people and wounding 250.
Earlier Tuesday, a suicide truck bomber killed 10 people and destroyed a bridge linking Baghdad to the north.
The US military also announced that 10 service members had died in the past two days, including five in a helicopter crash.
It said the CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed near al-Taqaddum air base outside Falluja, 50 km west of Baghdad, while on a "routine post-maintenance check flight."
There was no indication of whether it was shot down and an investigation was under way.
The deaths of the five on board the helicopter takes the total number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein to at least 3,699.
So far in August at least 41 US service members have died, already more than half of July's total of 71.
US President Bush, under pressure to show results in the unpopular war or start bringing troops home, has warned that August would be a bloody month.
US forces launched Operation Lightning Hammer, a big offensive of 16,000 troops beginning with an airborne assault overnight, part of a major new push targeting Sunni Islamist al Qaeda fighters and Shi'ite militias accused of links with Iran.
The latest operation targets militants who fled an earlier crackdown in the Diyala provincial capital of Baquba. The larger, countrywide Operation Phantom Strike was announced on Monday.
Al Qaeda is widely seen as trying to influence debate in Washington by stepping up attacks in Iraq before a crucial progress report on the war is delivered to Congress on September 15.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said US forces would launch a series of operations over the next 30 days.
Yazidis have been the target of attacks before. In April, gunmen shot dead 23 Yazidi factory workers in Mosul in apparent retaliation for the stoning of a teenage Yazidi girl several weeks earlier.
Police said the girl had been stoned to death by local Yazidis after falling in love with a Muslim man and converting to Islam.
Yazidis in Iraq say they have often faced discrimination because the chief angel they venerate as a manifestation of God is often identified as the fallen angel Satan in biblical terminology.
Yazidis, who say they suffered massacres during the secular rule of Saddam Hussein, also believe God created good and evil in the world.
- REUTERS
