Pat Dollard | Young Americans

MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ
PRESS DESK
BAGHDAD, Iraq
http://www.mnf-iraq.com
703.343.8790

Sept. 9, 2007
Release 070909b

Coalition forces kill terrorist responsible for Ninawa bombings

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Coalition forces positively identified a terrorist killed in an operation Sept. 3 southwest of Mosul as one of the terrorists responsible for the August bombings in Ninawa Province resulting in over 700 casualties.

Abu Muhammad al-Afri, also known as Abu Jasim, Arkan Hassan Ali, Nuraddin, Hajar and Abu Ahmad al-Afri, was the al-Qaeda in Iraq emir of Sinjar and was one of the terrorists responsible for ordering the Aug. 14 truck bombings, which primarily targeted the Yazidi population.

al-Afri was killed during a kinetic strike in a very remote area 70 miles southwest of Mosul. A fixed-wing aircraft conducted the strike, killing al-Afri and his driver. Close associates and detainees confirmed that al-Afri was killed during the strike.

When Coalition forces arrived to assess the site of the kinetic strike, they found two armed men attempting to sanitize the scene. The ground forces also found several files, a machine gun, military-style assault vests and bomb-making materials. Coalition forces detained both men.

“This doesn’t bring back the hundreds of innocent Iraqis who were killed in the vicious Ninawa bombings, but the death of Abu Muhammad al-Afri does bring justice to many families,” said Maj. Winfield Danielson, MNF-I spokesman. “We will continue to hunt down al-Qaeda in Iraq and its operatives, who conduct indiscriminate and brutal attacks.”

Iraq Media

Baghdad, Sept 9, (VOI) – The “mastermind” of last month’s bombings that targeted Iraq’s religious Yazidi minority was killed in a U.S. raid waged earlier in September near the northern city of Mosul, a spokesman for the U.S. army said on Sunday.

Four truck bombs were detonated in mid-August 2007 in Kar Izir area, 35 km south of Sinjar, and at the Siba Sheikh Khidr housing compound, leaving at least 800 people killed or wounded.

Sinjar, 120 km northwest of Mosul, is inhabited by Yazidis, a religious minority whose followers are generally situated in northern Iraq. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages around Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad

Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. They number around 500,000 individuals in total, but estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs.

Yazidis worship seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe.

A couple of related incidents in the spring highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis.

In April 2007, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was brutally beaten, kicked and stoned to death in northern Iraq by other Yazidis in what authorities said was an “honor killing” after she was seen with a Sunni Muslim man. Although she had not married him or converted, her attackers believed she had.

The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another faith.

A U.S. military official said the Sunni al-Qaeda Organization in Iraq sent members of the Yazidi religious minority threatening letters, called “night letters,” telling them “to leave because they are infidels.”

Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman, said there were three suicide trucks carrying two tons of explosives. At least 30 houses and other buildings were destroyed.