Search goes on as Iraq death toll tops 250

Men dig through rubble to search for survivors and dead on after coordinated suicide attacks in the town late of Qahataniya, 75 miles west of Mosul. Photograph: Mohammed Ibrahim/AP

Michael Howard in Sulaymaniya
Wednesday August 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

They dug through the muddy remains of their homes today with any implement they could find, even their own hands, but the final death toll from yesterday's devastating suicide truck bomb attacks on Yezidi Kurds in north-western Iraq may still not be known until Friday.
At least 250 bodies had been uncovered by last night, said Zayan Othman, the health minister of the nearby autonomous Kurdish region, which would make it the deadliest attack since the war began, surpassing the 215 killed by mortar fire and five car bombs in Baghdad's Shia enclave of Sadr City, on November 23 last year.

Dakil Qassim Hassoon, the mayor of Sinjar who was helping coordinate the grim search in Tel Uzeir and Sibi Sheikh Khidr, the two sub-districts of Sinjar that bore the brunt of the coordinated blasts, told the Guardian by phone: "We are still digging with our hands and shovels because we can't use cranes because many of the houses were built of clay."

"Over 100 houses were completely flattened." The mayor said one local policeman had eight family members missing.

"Everyone is helping, young and old, women and men, but we are getting only pieces of bodies," he said. "We are expecting to reach the final death toll today or tomorrow."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2149392,00.html