Sinjar blast casualties up to 15

NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: The number of casualties from Thursday’s earlier car bomb attack that targeted several stores in Sinjar district rose to three deaths and 12 wounded, according to the Sinjar local council chief. “The car bomb blast that targeted some stores in Tal Qasab, southern Sinjar, rose to three deaths and 12 wounded,” Weis Nayef Badal, quoting medics in Sinjar Hospital, told IraqiNews.com news agency. “Security and Kurdish peshmerga forces removed the bodies and rushed the wounded to the hospital for treatment,” he added. Earlier, an Iraqi police source said two people were killed and 10 others wounded in the attack that targeted a store selling liquor in Sinjar, western Mosul city. “The explosive vehicle attack went off near a liquor store in the predominantly religious minority Yazidi area of Tal Qasab, south of Sinjar district, (120 km) west of Mosul, leaving two, one of them an interpreter for the U.S. forces, killed and 10 others, wounded,” he said. He added that all of the casualties in the blast were Yazidis. Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. They number around 800,000 individuals in total, but estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs. 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. AmR (P) 2