Incident Summary:

05/29/2008: On Thursday morning at about 1045, in Sinjar, Ninawa, Iraq, a suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device in a crowd of civilians waiting outside a police station to apply for jobs as police officers, killing 16 people, wounding 21 people, and damaging the police station. There was no motive reported and no group claimed responsibility, although it was believed the Islamic State of Iraq was responsible.

Overview

GTD ID:
200805290029

When:
2008-05-29

Country:
Iraq

Region:
Middle East & North Africa

Province/administrative
region/u.s. state:
Nineveh

City:
Near Sinjar

Location Details:
The attack took place in Sinjar.

What

Attack Information
Type of Attack (more)	Bombing/Explosion
Successful Attack? (more)	Yes

Target Information (more)
Target Type: Police
Name of Entity	Iraqi Police Service (IPS)
Specific Description	Police recruits
Nationality of Target	Iraq

Additional Information
Hostages	No
Property Damage	Yes
Extent of Property Damage	Unknown
Value of Property Damage	Unknown

How

Weapon Information
Type	Sub-type
Explosives/Bombs/Dynamite	Suicide (carried bodily by human being)
Weapon Details
An improvised explosive device was used in the attack.

Additional Information
Suicide Attack?	Yes
Part of Multiple Incident?	No
Criterion 1 (more)	Yes
Criterion 2 (more)	Yes
Criterion 3 (more)	Yes
Doubt Terrorism Proper (more)	No
Additional Information	The most recent available sources listed the fatalities for this attack from eight to 16, and the injuries for this attack from 11 to 21, so the majority casualty figures have been used in order to preserve statistical accuracy in the database.

Who

Perpetrator Group Information
Group Name	Claimed Responsibility
Islamic State of Iraq (ISI)	No

Perpetrator Statistics
Number of Perpetrators	1
Number of Captured Perpetrators	0

Casualty Information
Total Number of Casualties	17 Fatalities / 21 Injured
Total Number of Fatalities	17
Number of U.S. Fatalities	0
Number of Perpetrator Fatalities	1
Total Number of Injured	21
Number of U.S. Injured	0
Number of Perpetrators Injured	0

Sources

Sources
"Stephen Farrell, "Two Attacks Kill 16 in Northern Iraq," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=middleeast&pagewanted=print (May 29, 2008)"
"Qatar News Agency, "Sinjar police chief sacked in light of bombing," LexisNexis Academic, Qatar News Agency, May 29, 2008."
"National Counterterrorism Center, "Fourteen Civilians, Two Police Officers Killed, Sixteen Civilians, Five Police Officers Wounded in Suicide Attack by Suspected ISI in Sinjar, Ninawa, Iraq," Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (January 29, 2010)."