On 14 August 2007, four massive truck bombs tore through the small Yezidi towns of Tel Ezer and Siba Sheikh Khidr in Sinjar, a remote district in northwest Iraq. The explosions killed over 800 members of the persecuted religious minority, marking it one of the deadliest terror attacks in history.

Rashid, a survivor of the attack in Tel Ezer, tells The Cradle that on the day of the bombing, his father sent his older brother to the market in the center of town to buy some things for the family. 

“When the bomb exploded in the market, I was in the garden of my home. Even though the bomb blast was far away, it was so strong it knocked me to the ground. It destroyed hundreds of homes,” explained Rashid, who was just five years old at the time.

“In a panic, I went to the market to find my brother. When I found him, I saw his body was torn into two parts. Many of my cousins were also killed.”

Benjamin Mixon, the U.S. commander of the “Multi-National Division North in Iraq,” quickly blamed Sunni Arab terrorists, declaring the bombing a “trademark Al-Qaeda event.”

Jasso’s Testimony 

However, Yezidi survivors, including Jasso from Tel Ezer, tell The Cradle a different story.

“No one in the Yezidi community believes Al-Qaeda did this,” at least not alone, he says. Jasso and other survivors insist that the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), led by long-time Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani, planned and orchestrated the attack.

“I was just five years old. My grandfather, two of my cousins, and my uncle were killed instantly. I saw their bodies. They were covered in blood. My grandfather’s body was missing a leg from the bomb.”

The carnage was amplified by the massive quantity of explosives and the way the attack was staged. The truck bombs were filled with nails and metal fragments, ensuring maximum casualties. 

Making matters worse, one of the trucks had lured a crowd of 500 to 600 people by distributing canisters of cooking gas, a rare commodity amid months of shortages.

“How did a terrorist group acquire enough gas to distribute to so many people when the supply had been cut for months? How did they get the gas?” Jasso asks.

He also wonders how the trucks managed to enter the two towns, even though their entrances were controlled by checkpoints manned by Kurdish security forces (Peshmerga) from Barzani’s KDP, which had occupied Sinjar since the U.S. invasion and fall of the late Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003.

“How did these trucks pass through so many checkpoints without being searched?” Jasso questions. “For these reasons, I believe the Kurdish government was responsible.” 

Murad’s Testimony

Murad, who was 11-years-old when he survived the bombing in Tel Ezer, recounts to The Cradle:

“The bomb in 2007 was the biggest in Iraq. We were young kids, playing football near my home when the explosion happened. The ball was under my foot. A piece of shrapnel hit the ball and popped it. Another piece hit my leg. I was so close to the explosion that I didn’t even hear it. People from neighboring towns could hear it, but I couldn’t.”

Murad’s seven-year-old sister had been standing right next to him, but after the explosion, she was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

“My father asked me, ‘Where is your sister?’ I told him, ‘She was here with me.’ But she was gone.”

As Murad’s family frantically searched for his sister, some people came to their home. They told his parents to make the children leave because they had something to show them.

“Here are some pieces of a child, some feet, hands, and limbs. We think it is your daughter. Come and have a look at it,” they said. But the dismembered body was not Murad’s sister.

The next day, they were looking for victims with the excavator and found her underneath the rubble. 

“My mother also found the body of one of the men who lived in the neighborhood. His head had been blown off by the bomb. A dog was chewing on it,” Murad explained.

When asked to share a memory of his youngest sister, he tells The Cradle,

“The day before the bomb, we bought melons, and we took out the seeds to dry and cook them to eat for a festival.”

“The next day I saw all of the seeds that my sister wanted us to eat all together. It was her idea,” Murad says while bursting into tears.

“This is the first time I am talking about what I have seen and faced on that day.” 

When asked who was responsible for the bombing, Murad hesitates but says, “Maybe the terrorists [Al-Qaeda] did it, but who was behind it? Those who should protect us. The Peshmerga from the KDP.”

“In Tel Ezer there were three entrances to the town with checkpoints. All were controlled by the Peshmerga. The Peshmerga could have inspected the trucks. The Peshmerga let them in,” he explains.

A ‘Mini-Nuclear Explosion’

Sunni Arabs from a village in Sinjar who spoke to The Cradle also suggest that while Al-Qaeda may have executed the attack, they did not act alone. 

When asked who was responsible for the bombings, they were all too scared to say. The leader of the village would only answer, “That is a powerful question.”

However, he and others from the village stated they do not believe a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda could have acquired the huge amounts of explosives that were used in the truck bombs. This was something only the military of a state was capable of, they say. 

This was no exaggeration. At the time, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN that the explosion was so big that the carnage resembled the aftermath of a “mini-nuclear explosion.”

Peshmerga Abandon their Posts 

Yezidis speaking with The Cradle say the Kurdish Peshmerga not only failed to inspect the trucks for explosives, but also abandoned the checkpoints surrounding both Tel Ezer and Siba Sheikh Khidr shortly before the trucks entered, leaving the Yezidis totally defenseless. This, they argue, is further proof of KDP complicity.

Yezidi human rights activist Mirza Ismael tells The Cradle that the Peshmerga commander in Sinjar, Serbest Taranshi, ordered his forces to leave their posts throughout the Yezidi villages in the region and go to the KDP headquarters in Sinjar City about half an hour to 40 minutes before the explosion.

Khurto, a Yezidi man from the nearby town of Karzark, confirms that the Peshmerga abandoned the checkpoints surrounding the towns:

“The Peshmerga left their checkpoints and went to the local KDP offices to hide themselves. Then at 7 o’clock there was an incredible explosion. My brother was in Tel Ezer when the bomb exploded. It was a miracle he survived. We went to help after the bombing, and there were body parts everywhere.” 

Hussein, a Yezidi from Siba Sheikh Khidr, tells The Cradle that people from the town spotted the trucks before they exploded and even reported them to the Peshmerga.

 “Some people saw the trucks and were suspicious. They told the Peshmerga about them and said they are dangerous for us, but the Peshmerga said there is nothing to worry about.” 

Peshmerga Open Fire on Yezidis

Khairy, a Yezidi man from Siba Sheikh Khidr, says that after the explosion, members of the Peshmerga opened fire on people as they fled in panic. 

“One of the trucks exploded inside the town, and one exploded west of it, close to our house. When it exploded, everyone tried to flee. When they ran, the Peshmerga opened fire on people trying to escape,” Khairy discloses to The Cradle.

“I saw this with my own eyes, about 7:00 pm in the evening. Many people were killed, and many houses were destroyed by the bomb The Peshmerga killed many people in the same moment. They killed maybe 10 or 20 who weren’t killed by the truck. Among them were children.”

Yezidis claim that the attack was carried out on Barzani’s behalf by Talal Ali Qasim, a member of Barzani’s secret police, the Asaysh. 

According to Mirza Ismael, Qasim was a close relative of Sami Abdul Rahman, then Barzani’s deputy. Qasim, a Muslim Kurd, had lived among Yezidis for two decades and spoke their dialect fluently. After his arrest, Qasim reportedly confessed to orchestrating the bombings. But within weeks, he was released and fled to Syria.

A U.S. Role?

Multiple Yezidis from Tel Ezer and Siba Sheikh Khidr also report that U.S. helicopters came to evacuate some of the wounded, and that these victims were never seen again. Qasim, from Siba Sheikh Khidr, tells The Cradle:

“There were more than 100 injured who were taken away by the Americans. But these people were never found. We count them among the victims.” 

Multiple Yezidis speaking with The Cradle stated they do not know why the injured who were taken away by the American helicopters were never seen again. Their fate remains a mystery.

Why Did the Kurds Carry Out the Bombings?

Aziz, a Yezidi from Tel Ezer, explains to The Cradle the reasons why Barzani and the KDP planned and executed bombings.

“First, many of the families of Tel Ezer and Siba Sheikh Khidr were from the Yezidi Movement for Reform and Progress. The movement had offices there. They rejected the presence of the Peshmerga and Barzani’s KDP in Sinjar. Resistance to the KDP was very strong. That was the first reason.” 

“Second, the bombing was meant to convince Yezidis across northern Iraq that they are in danger and that no one can protect them except the Peshmerga. So they created an excuse by killing people in the bombing and blaming it on Sunni Arabs from Al-Qaeda. It is clear even to a child that there were political reasons for the bombing.”

Under Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution, passed in 2005, a referendum was planned for the end of 2007. The referendum was supposed to give Iraqis living in the so-called “disputed territories,” such as Sinjar, Kirkuk, and Bashiqa, the choice of whether to remain under the central government in Baghdad or to join Barzani’s autonomous Kurdish region in Erbil.

After the bombing, Yezidis in Sinjar had two choices: “Either be killed or join the Kurdistan region,” Aziz says.

“The referendum would allow the KRG to use the law [Article 140] to take territory from the central government. They could say the people want us to protect them because they are scared of Al-Qaeda.”

The bombings successfully conveyed this message to a terrified Yezidi population throughout northern Iraq. 

“The Islamic terrorists had made it very clear that they wanted to see rivers of Yezidi blood,” explained Prince Tahseen Sayid Ali, a Yezidi leader in the town of Sheikhan, when speaking with The Guardian in the wake of the bombings. “The only protection for all the Yezidis is to be part of the Kurdish self-rule zone,” he concluded.

While the referendum planned for December 2007 was shelved by then-Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Baghdad government, Masoud Barzani and the KDP did not abandon their goals. 

Prelude to Genocide

Just a few years later, on 3 August 2014, Barzani and his Peshmerga again partnered with Al-Qaeda militants, by this time known as ISIS, to massacre, kidnap, and enslave thousands of Yezidis in the course of just a few days. 

Jasso, who was just five years old when he found the bodies of his grandfather, cousins, and uncle covered in blood after the 2007 bombing, tells The Cradle, “Seven years later, when I was twelve years old, I saw the same things during the 2014 genocide.”

For Yezidis from Sinjar, the genocide that ISIS carried out in 2014 did not come out of a vacuum. It was the culmination of a project that began years before. 

When asked why Barzani and the Peshmerga carried out the horrific terror attack in 2007 and the genocide in 2014, Mirza Ismael tells The Cradle: “To annihilate the Yezidis, steal their land, and build an Islamic state of Kurdistan.”

This article was originally featured at The Cradle and is republished with permission.