21 killed in attack on tiny Iraqi sect

A forbidden love affair that ended with a young woman being stoned to death led to more bloodshed Sunday when gunmen dragged 21 members of a religious minority off a bus and shot them dead, Iraqi police and witnesses said.

The incident in the northern city of Mosul was shocking in its brutality and frightening for the specter it raised: that violence between Muslims and non-Muslims could aggravate the already volatile ethnic conflict there between Arabs and Kurds. The victims were Yazidis, an ancient sect that is neither Christian nor Muslim and whose Kurdish followers have faced persecution under a succession of rulers.

Baghdad also was rocked by violence Sunday. Two attacks involving car bombs killed at least 19 people in the capital. One targeted a police station being used as temporary quarters for officers whose station had been destroyed in a bomb blast.

A U.S. military plan to wall off an especially volatile neighborhood of Baghdad appeared on the verge of collapse after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki joined the chorus of complaints about the project, which critics say will worsen relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

At a news conference in Cairo, Maliki said there were other ways to keep neighborhoods safe, the Associated Press reported. “I oppose the building of the wall, and its construction will stop,” he said.

American troops began building the 12-foot-high wall around the Sunni area of Adhamiya on April 10 as part of a U.S.-Iraqi security plan to calm Baghdad. The U.S. military had portrayed it as the best method to stop violence in Adhamiya, which is surrounded by Shiite districts.

In a statement late Sunday, the U.S. military said that it was aware of Maliki’s statements and would work with the Iraqi government and military “to establish effective security measures.”

Police in Mosul said the slayings of the Yazidis took place in the evening. Men in two cars blocked off a road, stopping a bus taking employees of a weaving factory home. The men then separated the Yazidis from the other passengers and shot them dead, police Capt. Ibrahim Jaboori said.

Police and residents of Bashiqa, where most of the victims lived, linked the attack to the stoning death there this month of a Yazidi woman. She was slain by fellow Yazidis angry over her conversion to Islam and love affair with a Sunni man.

Ayad Arshad, 17, a student who was nearby when the shooting started, said people panicked and fled into their homes. When it was over, Arshad said, he emerged from his house to see bodies strewn on the ground.

“Most of them were older people. Only two were about my age,” he said. “The scene was disgusting. It reminded me of what my father told me about the genocides that Saddam [Hussein] used to do.”

The killings struck terror among Yazidis, who shuttered their shops and braced for more attacks.

“The shops were closed in all the areas and neighborhoods where Yazidis live,” said Aydan Sheik, a Yazidi from Bashiqa, about 20 miles north of Mosul. “People ran in fear, hiding in their houses. Bashiqa is like a ghost town.”

In February, Yazidis in Bashiqa went into hiding after mobs of Sunni Kurds attacked businesses and homes there in anger over a Muslim woman’s association with two Yazidi men.

Contested city

The killings raised the specter of a new crisis in Mosul, where Kurds and Arabs already are vying for dominance in an increasingly bloody ethnic conflict. This month, the U.S. military announced that the security crackdown that was supposed to focus on Baghdad and Al Anbar province would be extended to Mosul, 225 miles north of the capital.

A Sunni Arab politician in Mosul blamed the shootings on insurgents trying to foment religious violence.

“A week ago when they killed the girl that converted to Islam, it was a hideous crime,” Yahya Mahmood said. “However, this is not justification for what happened today. This incident is a conspiracy against Mosul to incite civil war.”

Nineveh provincial Deputy Gov. Khasro Goran said last month that former Baathists loyal to Hussein and “chauvinist Arabs” pretending to act on behalf of Islamic ideals were targeting the Kurdish population in Mosul, the provincial capital. This included trying to drive a wedge among the Kurds by accusing the Yazidis of not being authentic Kurds, Goran told the Kurdish newspaper Jamawar.

Yazidis practice an ancient religion that includes elements of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A key divine figure is the archangel Malak Taus, who is depicted as a royal blue peacock.

Under Ottoman rule, they were targeted for refusing to convert to Islam. Under Hussein’s Sunni Arab-dominated regime, they were marginalized along with other non-Sunnis. Since the fall of Hussein, Yazidis say they have come under fire from both Sunni Arabs and Kurds because of their beliefs.

The London-based Minority Rights Group estimated in February that Yazidis in Iraq had numbered 550,000 before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 but that many had fled since because of rising religious and ethnic tensions.

Earlier Sunday in Baghdad, 12 people were killed and dozens of policemen were injured in the attack on the station in the southwestern neighborhood of Bayaa, and cars and nearby buildings were severely damaged. Police said two car bombs blew up in quick succession.

The station had more officers than usual because police from the nearby Dora district had moved there after their building was demolished last month in a massive truck bombing.

Another major attack Sunday also involved two explosions: The first was a car bomb that went off in a residential neighborhood, killing six people. Minutes later, a roadside bomb targeted a police patrol approaching the scene and killed one officer.

Iraqi security forces are frequently targeted because insurgents consider them traitors for working with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.

U.S. troop deaths

The U.S. military announced the deaths of four American troops. They included a Marine killed when a base southwest of the capital came under fire Saturday night, and a soldier killed Saturday in west Baghdad when a patrol was attacked by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. On Friday, a Marine died during fighting in Al Anbar. In addition, a soldier died Saturday of noncombat causes, the military said.

It also said security forces had killed 15 alleged militants suspected of involvement with the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq during an airstrike Sunday south of Baghdad. The militants were accused of kidnapping and of recruiting foreign fighters to join insurgents in Iraq, the U.S. statement said.

At least 3,323 U.S. troops have died in the Iraq war, according to the website icasualties.org, which tracks war-related deaths and injuries.

susman@latimes.com

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Special correspondent Ruaa Al-Zarary in Mosul and correspondents in Baghdad contributed to this report.