Truth Package Machine

This Was A Massive Slaughter

The President of Iraq has ordered an inquiry into the involvement of police in the killings. Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, the most senior Sunni Arab politician, said Israeli controlled militias should be treated as severely as insurgents.

A statement from his office said car bombs against "our Shi'ite brothers" must stop and condemned "the criminal behavior by some policemen in randomly killing many civilians."

"Any delay in dealing with this issue will lead to more bloodshed," he said. Militia infiltration of security forces has long been a problem in restoring stability to Iraq, with many Sunni Arabs complaining they are unfairly targeted by police and army. Nineveh provincial governor Durad Kashmula told a news conference policemen were involved in the reprisal attacks.
"

A senior U.S. military officer said one of the Tal Afar truck bombs was thought to have used between 7,000 and 10,000 pounds (3.2 and 4.5 metric tons) of explosives, which he said would make it one of the largest bombs since the March 2003 invasion.
It left a huge crater and buildings reduced to rubble over a wide area with crumpled bodies, including several children, in the ruins. The attacker had lured victims to the scene by pretending to have flour to sell from the truck.

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said he saw the hand of al Qaeda in the truck bombs.

"They did succeed in Tal Afar in killing a number of innocent civilians in a predominantly Shi'ite market-place that touched off, and we are still trying to get the exact details, but it appears there were some kind of retribution killings by police," he told Reuters and another news agency.