See also
- Genocide of Yazidis by ISIL
- Sinjar massacre – Mass genocide and kidnapping carried out by ISIS
- List of Yazidi settlements
- List of 2007 suicide bombings in Iraq
| 2007 Qahtaniyah bombings | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Iraq War | |
| Location | Til Ezer and Siba Sheikh Khidir, Nineveh Governorate, Iraq |
| Date | August 14, 2007 (UTC+3) |
| Target | Yazidis |
Attack type | Suicide truck bombs |
| Deaths | 796 (+4 bombers) |
| Injured | 1,562+ |
| Perpetrators | Unknown, al-Qaeda suspected |
The Qahtaniyah bombings occurred on August 14, 2007, when four coordinated suicide car bomb attacks detonated in the Yazidi towns of Til Ezer (al-Qahtaniyah) and Siba Sheikh Khidir (al-Jazirah), in northern Iraq.
796 people were killed and at least 1,500 others were wounded, [1] [2] [3] making it the Iraq War's deadliest car bomb attack. It is also the third deadliest act of terrorism in world history, after the September 11 attacks in the United States, and the Camp Speicher massacre, also in Iraq. [4] No group claimed responsibility for the attacks.
For several months leading up to the attack, tensions had been building up in the area, particularly between Yazidis and Sunni Muslims (both Arabs and Kurds). Some Yazidis living in the area received threatening letters calling them "infidels". [5] Leaflets were also distributed denouncing Yazidis as "anti-Islamic" and warning them that an attack was imminent. [6] [7]
The attack was possibly connected with the murder of Du'a Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old Yazidi girl, who was stoned to death by fellow Yazidis four months earlier. Aswad was believed to have wanted to convert in order to marry a Sunni. [8] [9] Two weeks later, after a video of the stoning appeared on the Internet, Sunni gunmen [10] stopped minibuses filled with Yazidis; 23 Yazidi men were forced from a bus and shot dead. [11]
The Sinjar area, which has a mixed population of Yazidis, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen and Arabs, was scheduled to vote in a plebiscite on accession to the Kurdistan Region in December 2007. This caused hostility among the neighbouring Arab communities. A force of 600 Kurdish Peshmerga was subsequently deployed in the area, and ditches were dug around Yazidi villages to prevent further attacks. [12]
The bombings occurred at around 7:20 pm on August 14, 2007, when four co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks detonated in the Yazidi towns of Qahtaniyah and Jazeera (Siba Sheikh Khidir), near Mosul, Nineveh Governorate, northern Iraq. They targeted the Yazidis, a religious minority in Iraq, [13] [14] using a fuel tanker and three cars. An Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said that two tons of explosives were used in the blasts, which crumbled buildings, trapping entire families beneath mud bricks and other wreckage as entire neighborhoods were flattened. Rescuers dug underneath the destroyed buildings by hand to search for remaining survivors. [15]
"Hospitals here are running out of medicine. The pharmacies are empty. We need food, medicine and water otherwise there will be an even greater catastrophe," said Abdul-Rahim al-Shimari, mayor of the Baaj district, which includes the devastated villages. [16]
There were 796 people killed and at least 1,562 more wounded. [1] [2] [3]
No group claimed responsibility for the attack. Iraq's President, Jalal Talabani, accused Iraqi Sunni insurgents of the bombings, pointing at the history of Sunni violence against Yazidis. They were reported to have distributed leaflets denouncing Yazidis as "anti-Islamic". [17] Although the attacks carry al-Qaeda's signature of multiple simultaneous attacks, it is unclear why they would refrain from claiming responsibility for such a successful operation. "We're looking at Al-Qaeda as the prime suspect," said Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, a United States military spokesman. [18]
On September 3, 2007, the U.S. military reportedly killed the suspected mastermind of the bombings, Abu Mohammed al-Afri. [19]
Tal Afar is a city in the Nineveh Governorate of northwestern Iraq, located 63 km (39 mi) west of Mosul, 52 km (32 mi) east of Sinjar and 200 km (120 mi) northwest of Kirkuk. Its local inhabitants are exclusively Turkmen.
Sinjar is a town in the Sinjar District of the Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. It is located about five kilometers south of the Sinjar Mountains. Its population in 2013 was estimated at 88,023, and is predominantly Yazidi.
Events in the year 2007 in Iraq.
Til Ezer is a village located in the Sinjar District of the Ninawa Governorate in Iraq. The village is located south of the Sinjar Mount, in the disputed territories of Northern Iraq.
The Sinjar Resistance Units is a Yazidi militia formed in Iraq in 2007 to protect Yazidis in Iraq in the wake of attacks by Sunni Islamist insurgents. It is the second largest Yazidi militia, after the Êzîdxan Protection Force (HPÊ). However, it is much more active than the HPÊ in fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The Sinjar District or the Shingal District is a district of the Nineveh Governorate. The district seat is the town of Sinjar. The district has two subdistricts, al-Shemal and al-Qayrawan. The district is one of two major population centers for Yazidis, the other being Shekhan District.
The Iraqi insurgency was an insurgency that began in late 2011 after the end of the Iraq War and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, resulting in violent conflict with the central government, as well as low-level sectarian violence among Iraq's religious groups.
The War in Iraq (2013–2017) was an armed conflict between Iraq and its allies and the Islamic State. Following December 2013, the insurgency escalated into full-scale guerrilla warfare following clashes in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in parts of western Iraq, and culminated in the Islamic State offensive into Iraq in June 2014, which lead to the capture of the cities of Mosul, Tikrit and other cities in western and northern Iraq by the Islamic State. Between 4–9 June 2014, the city of Mosul was attacked and later fell; following this, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a national state of emergency on 10 June. However, despite the security crisis, Iraq's parliament did not allow Maliki to declare a state of emergency; many legislators boycotted the session because they opposed expanding the prime minister's powers. Ali Ghaidan, a former military commander in Mosul, accused al-Maliki of being the one who issued the order to withdraw from the city of Mosul. At its height, ISIL held 56,000 square kilometers of Iraqi territory, containing 4.5 million citizens.
Between 1 and 15 August 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) expanded territory in northern Iraq under their control. In the region north and west from Mosul, the Islamic State conquered Zumar, Sinjar, Wana, Mosul Dam, Qaraqosh, Tel Keppe, Batnaya and Kocho, and in the region south and east of Mosul the towns Bakhdida, Karamlish, Bartella and Makhmour
The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Iraq.
The Timeline of the War in Iraq covers the War in Iraq, a war which erupted that lasted in Iraq from 2013 to 2017, during the first year of armed conflict.
The November Sinjar offensive was a combination of operations of Kurdish Peshmerga, PKK, and Yezidi Kurd militias in November 2015, to recapture the city of Sinjar from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It resulted in a decisive victory for the Kurdish forces, who expelled the ISIL militants from Sinjar and regained control of Highway 47, which until then had served as the major supply route between the ISIL strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
Sheikh Khairy Khedr was the Commander and founder of the Yazidi militia Malik Al-Tawus Troop, which later became the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBŞ). He was born in Siba Sheikh Khidir (Jazeera).
Siba Sheikh Khidir is a village located in the Sinjar District of the Ninawa Governorate in Iraq. The village is located south of the Sinjar Mount. It belongs to the disputed territories of Northern Iraq. Siba Sheikh Khidir is populated by Yazidis and was one of two villages targeted in the 2007 Yazidi communities bombings against the local Yazidi community.
The origins of the Islamic State group can be traced back to three main organizations. Earliest of these was the "Jamāʻat al-Tawḥīd wa-al-Jihād" organization, founded by the Jihadist leader Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi in Jordan in 1999. The other two predecessor organizations emerged during the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupation forces. These included the "Jaish al-Ta'ifa al-Mansurah" group founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004 and the "Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jama’ah" group founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his associates in the same year.
The persecution of Yazidis has been ongoing since at least the 12th century. Yazidis are an endogamous and mostly Kurmanji-speaking minority, indigenous to Kurdistan. The Yazidi religion is regarded as "devil-worship" by some Muslims and Islamists. Yazidis have been persecuted by the surrounding Muslims since the medieval ages, most notably by Safavids, Ottomans, neighbouring Muslim Arab and Kurdish tribes and principalities. After the 2014 Sinjar massacre of thousands of Yazidis by ISIL, which started the ethnic, cultural, and religious genocide of the Yazidis in Iraq, Yazidis still face discrimination from the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Regional Government.
