IRAQ:They dug through the muddy remains of their homes yesterday with any implement they could find, even their own hands, but the final death toll from Tuesday's devastating suicide bomb attacks on Yazidi Kurds in northwestern Iraq may still not be known until tomorrow, writes Michael Howardin Sulaymaniya.
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 23rd last year.
Dakil Qassim Hassoon, mayor of Sinjar, who was helping to co-ordinate the search in Tel Uzeir and Sibi Sheikh Khidr, the two subdistricts that bore the brunt of the blasts, told this reporter: "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 . . . but we are getting only pieces of bodies," he said.
"We are expecting to reach the final death toll today or tomorrow."
As the search continued, the US military hospital in Mosul and the general hospital in the Kurdish-controlled city of Dohuk to the north, struggled to treat over 350 casualties. Television pictures showed an emergency room in Dohuk overwhelmed.
Kurdish authorities in Irbil said they planned to send food parcels for about 5,000 people estimated to have been made homeless by the blasts. The governor of Nineveh province, who visited the scene yesterday, promised tents.
Meanwhile, towns in the region west of Mosul were under a curfew, and US and Iraqi troops conducted house to house searches in a number of Sunni Arab villages close to the Yazidi settlements where the blasts occurred. Military sources said 20 suspects had been detained.
US officials said the attack bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.
"The car bombs that were used all had the consistent profile of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq violence," Brig Gen Kevin Bergner said in Baghdad. "We're continuing to investigate, and we'll learn more in the coming days."
US commanders say Mosul and its western environs have recently attracted Sunni militants who have pushed north from strongholds in and around Baghdad. Mr Hassoon said he had received intelligence reports that extremists were planning an attack on Sinjar. "We introduced tight security measures, and the terrorists may well have changed to a softer target," he said.