New coalition government formed by al-Maliki

Iraq bombs death toll rises to 400
Thursday August 16, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani. Photograph: AFP/Getty

The death toll from Tuesday’s huge suicide bombings in north-western Iraq has risen to at least 400, according to a government spokesman.More victims of the attacks – the bloodiest atrocity since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003 – have been pulled from neighbourhoods of collapsed mud homes.

The areas were destroyed when suspected Islamist extremists targeted members of the Yezidis, a Kurdish-speaking pre-Muslim sect, in Nineveh province.

“Their aim is to annihilate us, to create trouble and kill all the Yezidis because we are not Muslims,” Abu Saeed, a resident of one of the devastated areas, told Reuters.

Mr Saeed told the deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, who made a short tour of the devastated neighbourhood, that 51 members of his extended family had been killed.

Around 100 angry Yezidi men gathered as Mr Salih met local officials. “It’s like a nuclear site, the site of a nuclear bomb,” Mr Salih, a Kurd, told Reuters.

Suicide bombers detonated explosives rigged to fuel tankers in three remote Yezidi villages. A spokesman for the interior ministry today said two tonnes of explosives had been used in the blasts.

Earlier, local officials had said as many as 500 people had been killed, adding that rescuers were still looking for bodies.

The commander of US forces in northern Iraq, Major General Benjamin Mixon, described the attack as “ethnic cleansing”. It remained unclear whether US plans to reduce troops levels in Nineveh would go ahead.

The grim rescue operation continued as political leaders unveiled a new governing coalition between moderate Shia Muslims and Kurds after intensive negotiations in Baghdad.

The prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said he hoped the alliance, which commands a parliamentary majority, would address charges that his government was biased towards Shias and had been ineffective at clamping down on terrorism.

However, the coalition is unlikely to heal Iraq’s key religious fault line because it excludes even moderate Sunni Muslims.

Iraq’s Sunni vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, and his moderate Iraqi Islamic party refused to join despite assurances from the country’s Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, that the door was “always open”.

Mr Talabani, Mr Maliki and Massoud Barzani, the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region, along with Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the Shia vice-president, announced the deal at a news conference today.

It guarantees them a majority in the 275-seat parliament, enabling the coalition to push through legislation demanded by the US, including a law on the distribution of oil wealth.

The deal was announced after the Sunni Accordance Front – which includes Mr Hashemi’s party – resigned from the government.

Seventeen government ministers, almost half of the cabinet, have either suspended work or left this year.

“We have relegated efforts to topple the government to the past,” a spokesman for the prime minister said. “We are now in a new stage.”

A representative of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic party said it had only received the invitation to join the coalition yesterday. “We said we are not ready to join this alliance at the current time,” he added.

Elsewhere, US forces said they had killed six insurgents they claimed were linked to al-Qaeda, as well as detaining 26 others during a week-long offensive around 50 miles north of Baghdad. Two US troops were killed.

The Age of Nefarious: some comparative statistics

In the Second World War it is estimated that 42 million civilians and 25 million military died.  In addition to these civilian deaths there were more than 5 million Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis, bringing the death total to more than 72 million persons.  Americans serving in the military who were killed numbered 407,300.  Japanese military numbered more than 2 million with 580,000 civilians; German military numbered more than 5 million with nearly two million civilians killed.  World War I included 66 million casualties.

*All estimates in this summary use the “highest” vs “lowest” estimates that are contained in a Wikipedia source

More recently, the Second Congo War killed 13 million; the Vietnam War 5 million; and the Korean War 3.5 million.  The Persian Gulf Iran-Iraq War killed a million between 1980 and 1988, as did the Second Sudanese Civil War which extended from 1983 to 2002.  The Nigerian Civil War from 1967 to 1970 claimed a million and the Mozambique Civil War another million.  A million died in Rawanda from 1990 to 1994 and 800,000 in the Congo from 1991 to 1997.  Approximately 550,000 Somalians have died in the war that continues there.  500,000 Ugandans died in their 1979-86 Civil War.  The Mexican Revolution in the early 1900’s claimed 2 million while nearly 1.5 million Ethiopians died from 1974 to 1991. 

Earlier our own Civil War claimed 970,000.  In the British Isles 250-735,000 died in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the mid 1600’s.

It is estimated by some that 655,000 have been killed so far in the Iraq war since the invasion in 2003.  The low estimate is of 250,000.    A lesser number of 100,000 were killed in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and 49,600 have been killed in Afghanistan.  The Arab-Israeli conflict is said to have claimed the lives of 14,200 Israelis and 86 to 100 thousand Arabs along with more than 325 others, mainly British.

75,000 died in El Salvador; 70,000 in the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru, and 68,000 in Sri Lanka’s Civil War.  200,000 died in Chechnya in its first war and 100,000 in its second since 1999 and is ongoing..

Genocide is said to have claimed more than 320 million persons, including 60 million in the African slave trade and 15 million in the Democide/genocide of Native Americans.

Battles include 1.5 million at Stalingrad and Leningrad each; 1.3 at Kursk; 1.4 at Brusilov.  Closer to home 55,000 were killed at Gettysburg; 12,000 at Chancellorsville and 11,000 at Petersburg, Virginia.

Numbers killed in terrorist attacks are as follows:  there have been 21 attacks in Iraq added to this list since the beginning of the Iraq War.

• 2,997 – September 11, 2001 attacks, (New York City, Arlington, VA, Shanksville, PA, United States, 2001)
• 500 – 2007 Kahtaniya bombings, (Iraq, 2007)
• 430 – Cinema Rex fire, (Abadan, Iran, 1978)
• 365 – Beslan School Siege, (Beslan, Russia, 2004)
• 329 – Air India Flight 182 (Atlantic Ocean, south of Ireland, 1985)
• 307 – 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, (Beirut, Lebanon, 1983)
• 270 – Pan Am Flight 103, (Lockerbie, Scotland, 1988)
• 257 – 1993 Mumbai bombings (Mumbai, India, 1993)
• 257 – 1998 United States embassy bombings 1998
• 215 – Sadr City bombings, (Sadr City, Iraq, 2006)
• 209 – 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings, (Mumbai, India, 2006)
• 202 – 2002 Bali bombing, (Indonesia, 2002)
• 198 – 18 April 2007 Baghdad bombings, (Iraq, 2007)
• 191 – 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings, (Spain, 2004)
• 181 – Kerbala and Baghdad attacks, (2004, see Ashoura Massacre)
• 171 – UTA Flight UT-772, (Niger, 1989)
• 170 – Moscow Theatre Siege, (Russia, 2002)
• 168 – Oklahoma City bombing, (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, 1995)
• 152 – 2007 Tal Afar bombings and massacre (Tal Afar, Iraq, 2007)
• 135 – 3 February 2007 Baghdad market bombing, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2007)
• 127 – 2005 Al Hillah bombing (Al Hillah, Iraq, 2005)
• 120 – 2007 Al Hillah bombings (Al Hillah, Iraq, 2007)
• 117 – 2004 Irbil bombings, (Irbil, Iraq, 2004)
• 116 – Superferry 14 bombing, (Philippines, 2004)
• 112 – 14 September 2005 Baghdad bombing, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2004)
• 112 – Avianca Flight 203, (Colombia, 1989)
• 98 – Musayyib fuel tanker bombing, (Musayyib, Iraq, 2005) (see Triangle of Death (Iraq))
• 91 – King David Hotel bombing, (Jerusalem, 1946)
• 90 – Central Bank Bombing, (Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1996)
• 90 – 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks, (Egypt, 2005)
• 89 – Russian airplane bombings, (Russia, 2004)
• 88 – TWA Flight 841, (Ionian Sea, 1974)
• 88 – 22 January 2007 Baghdad bombings, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2007)
• 86 – AMIA Bombing, (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1994)
• 85 – Buratha Mosque bombing, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2006)
• 85 – Stazione Centrale bombing, (Bologna, Italy, 1980)
• 83 – Imam Ali Mosque bombing, (Najaf, Iraq, 2003)
• 76 – 12 February 2007 Baghdad bombings, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2007)
• 74 – 2005 Khanaqin bombings, (Khanaqin, Iraq, 2005)
• 74 – 21 April 2004 Basra bombings, (Basra, Iraq, 2004)
• 74 – 2004 Kufa shelling, (Kufa, Iraq, 2004)
• 70 – 2007 Baghdad Mustansiriya University bombing, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2007)
• 68 – 2007 Samjhauta Express bombings, (India, 2007)
• 63 – 18 February 2007 Baghdad bombings, (Baghdad, Iraq, 2007)
• 63 – DAS Building bombing, (Bogotá, Colombia, 1989)
• 63 – April 1983 US Embassy bombing, (Beirut, Lebanon, 1983)
• 62 – 1 July 2006 Sadr City bombing, (Sadr City, Iraq, 2006)
• 61 – 29 October 2005 New Delhi bombings, (New Delhi, 2005)
• 60 – 2005 Amman bombings, (Amman, 2005)
• 57 – 2003 Istanbul Bombings, (Turkey, 2003)
• 52 – 7 July 2005 London bombings (London, 2005)
• 52 – 2003 Mumbai bombings, (Mumbai, India, 2003)
• 46 – Casablanca Attacks, (Morocco, 2003)
• 42 – 2004 Moscow metro bombing, Russia, 2004)
• 38 – Wall Street bombing, (New York City, 1920)
• 34 – 2004 Sinai bombings, Taba and Nuweiba, Egypt, 2004
• 33 – Pan Am Flight 110, (Italy, 1973)
• 33 – Coimbatore blasts, (India, 1998)
• 33 – Dublin and Monaghan Bombings, (Ireland, 1974)
• 30 – Passover massacre, (Israel, 2002)