Iraq says bomb toll reaches 400; U.S. says between 175 and 200

Above: Aerial view of Kahtaniya, one of two Yazidi villages that were hit by the multiple fuel-truck bombings.

The death toll from four suicide truck bomb attacks in northern Iraq has risen to 400, officials said today, making it easily the deadliest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein four years ago.

'More than 400 people were killed and the toll is expected to rise,' the interior ministry's director of operations Major General Abdel Karim Khalaf told AFP.

The new toll was announced as rescuers continued to pulled out corpses from the rubble in villages devastated by Tuesday's truck bombings that targeted members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect.

Two days after the bombings, the rescue operation was continuing as teams of army, police and civilians clawed through the carnage unleashed in the villages of Al-Qataniyah and Al-Adnaniyah in the northern province of Nineveh...

'What we are tracking for both villages is between 175 and 200 killed with another 300 wounded,' said a spokesman for the US army's Taskforce Lightning.

Read the rest at Forbes

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