Car bomb leaves 7 casualties in Ninewa

NINEWA / IraqiNews.com: Three people were killed and four others were wounded in a booby-trapped car explosion in west of Mosul, a security source said on Wednesday. “The car bomb exploded at a market in central Sinjar city, west of Mosul, killing three and injuring four, including two policemen,” the source told IraqiNews.com. Sinjar, 120 km northwest of Mosul, is inhabited by Yazidis, a religious minority whose followers are generally situated in northern Iraq. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages around Mosul, 402 km north of Baghdad. The Yazidi faith is not a missionary religion. Its followers are concentrated in northern Iraq. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), there are about 800,000 Yazidis all over the world. 550,000 of them live in Iraq and concentrated in the district of Sinjar, where the temple Lalesh is considered the holiest shrine for Yazidis, the district of al-Shaykhan (50 km north of Mosul), the district of Bueshiqa (15 km east of Mosul) and some other areas and villages in the provinces of Ninewa and Duhuk. Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. The estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs. Mosul, the capital city of Ninewa, lies 405 km north of Baghdad. SH (S) 1