TOLL MAY NEVER BE KNOWN
Nineveh province governor Duraid Kashmoula said the blasts in Kahtaniya and al-Jazeera had levelled hundreds of houses, mostly made of clay, and buried entire families. He put the death toll at 220.
Zairyan Othman, minister of health in neighbouring Kurdistan, Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, said 205 were killed and 235 wounded. Iraq's Health Ministry said on Thursday more than 150 were killed and more than 200 wounded.
Kifah Mohammed, director of Sinjar hospital in the area of the bombings, said the toll could be 500, with 400 wounded. Other health officials in the area said the 500 included dead and wounded.
The U.S. military said between 175 and 180 people had probably been killed. "I don't know if we'll ever get to a point where we'll have an exact figure," Lemons said.
Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih flew to the region on Thursday to inspect the devastated villages.
U.S. officials had said they feared al Qaeda would launch a large-scale attack on civilians before mid-September, when the U.S. Congress is due to receive a military and political progress report on Iraq.
U.S. forces launched an airborne assault on a compound south of Baghdad early on Thursday, the first strike in a major new offensive that is part of a countrywide push announced this week against both Sunni Arab and Shi'ite militants.
Yazidis are members of a pre-Islamic Kurdish sect in northern Iraq and Syria who say they are persecuted because of their beliefs.
In Baghdad, a car bomb in a parking lot killed nine people and wounded 17 on Thursday near al-Russafi Square in the heart of the capital.
