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At least 20 killed in bombing; Iraqi minority sect may have been target

Other News Materials 13 August 2009 23:33 (UTC +04:00)

At least 20 people were killed and 30 wounded in a double suicide bombing in northern Iraq Thursday, an Interior Ministry official told CNN.

Hours later, two people were killed and 13 were wounded in a motorcycle bombing in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of southern Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said.

Two suicide bombers with explosive vests carried out the earlier attack at a cafe in Sinjar, a town west of the city of Mosul.

Many of the town's inhabitants are members of the Yazidi minority, an ancient religious sect that has been the target of previous attacks in Iraq.

More than 400 people died and at least 300 were injured when suicide truck bombers struck predominantly Yazidi villages in August 2007, a series of attacks that rank among the deadliest in Iraq's ongoing violence.

The Yazidi sect is a mainly Kurdish minority, an ancient group that worships seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who its followers believe are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe.

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