2) Yazidi Communities Bombing – 2007

At around 8pm on the 4th August, 2007 four separate suicide bombs went off in unison across two Yazidi towns. The Yazidi are a Kurdish culture who follow the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. The towns of Kahtaniya and Jazeera saw the deaths of 796 people and the wounding of 1,562 making it the second worst act of terrorism by death toll the world has ever seen.

Before the incident tensions had been running high between Sunni Muslims and the Yazidi folk. The Yazidi had received death threats and attack warnings in the months prior to the acts. One Yazidi teenager had been stoned to death and a bus full of Yazidis had been marched off and summarily executed, all within a few weeks of the final act of terror.

The bombs used were a petrol tanker, three cars and two tonnes of explosives. No one to this day has claimed responsibility for the attacks but it carries some of the hall marks of an Al-Qaeda operation.