Forbidden love in Iraq ends in violence

Gunmen kill 21 members of Yazidi religious sect that had stoned woman

BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- A forbidden love affair that ended with a young woman's death by stoning led to religiously motivated bloodshed Sunday when gunmen dragged members of a tiny religious minority off a bus and killed 21 of them, police and witnesses said.

The incident in the northern city of Mosul was shocking in its brutality and frightening for the specter it raised -- violence between Muslims and non-Muslims aggravating the already volatile conflict involving Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds.

The victims were Yazidis, a sect that is neither Christian nor Muslim and whose followers have faced persecution from a succession of rulers.

Police in Mosul said the slayings of the Yazidis took place Sunday evening, as a bus was carrying employees of a weaving factory home after work. Men in two sedans blocked the road on which the bus was traveling, then separated the Yazidis from other passengers before shooting them, said police Capt. Ibrahim Jaboori.

Police and residents of Bashiqa, home for many of the victims, linked the attack to the stoning death earlier in April of a Yazidi woman by fellow Yazidis angry over her conversion to Islam and love affair with a Sunni man. The stoning occurred in Bashiqa, they said, about 20 miles north of Mosul.

Ayad Arshad, 17, a student who was nearby, said people panicked and fled into their homes. After it was over, Arshad 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 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 Sheikh, a Yazidi from Bashiqa. "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 in anger over a Muslim woman's association with two Yazidi men.

The killings raised the specter of a new crisis in Mosul, where Kurds and Sunni Arabs are vying for dominance in an increasingly bloody ethnic conflict.

Earlier in April, the U.S. military announced that the security crackdown that was supposed to focus on Baghdad and neighboring al-Anbar province would be extended to Mosul, 225 miles north of the capital, because of violence there.

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."