Casualties from Tuesday’s deadly bombing attacks in Sinjar district rose to 250 dead and 350 wounded, while an indefinite curfew was imposed on the area, making it the deadliest single attack since the beginning of the 2003 war.

In a statement in Arabic condemning the attack, the Yazidi Movement for Reform and Progress, a political party representing the Yazidi minority in Iraq, claimed a death toll as high as 750, but this number has not been confirmed by news agencies.

The group, which holds one seat in the Iraqi parliament, also held the Maliki government “responsible” for the failure to protect the Yazidi population, according to the statement.

The movement's website has also posted a gruesome photo of a part of a man's face lying in the rubble, which, according to the group is believed to have belonged to one of the suicide attackers that detonated their explosive vehicle-borne payloads in the attack.

Meanwhile, rescue and recovery operations continued in the blast zones, while the city is under indefinite curfew.

“Search and rescue operations are still underway, while a curfew was imposed on the city on vehicles, starting from 6:00 am on Wednesday until further notice,” the Sinjar mayor Hassoun told VOI.

"We are still digging with our hands and shovels because we can't use cranes because many of the houses were built of clay," said Dakheel Qasem Hassoun, the Guardian writes.

"We are expecting to reach the final death toll tomorrow or day after tomorrow as we are getting only pieces of bodies."

Ilias Hamad, a 32-year old man with a leg injury said, "Three members of my family were injured and my house was destroyed. I do not know where to go."

Scores of villagers are homeless after the explosions destroyed their mud-built homes.

Full casualty figures may not be known for days, but the current count of approximately 250 already eclipses the toll of the November 23, 2006 attacks in Sadr City that killed 215.

Fuel trucks

The attacks struck Yazidi villiages in the Sinjar district of Ninewa province, west of Mosul near the Syrian border.

"Two cars rigged with explosives simultaneously detonated at the Siba Sheikh Khidr housing compound, west of Mosul, killing more than 20 civilians and wounding over 40," a security source, who asked not to be named, told VOI.

The source added, "the housing compound, the largest in Sinjar district, also came under a mortar attack following the double explosion, leaving scores dead or wounded."

Meanwhile, two more explosions occurred in the nearby Kar Izir area, 35 km south of Sinjar, killing and wounding dozens of people and causing many buildings to collapse, the same source told VOI.

The source added, "the explosions set people into panic while ambulances were still rushing the wounded to Sinjar hospital."

According to the Guardian (UK), the bombs were detonated on loaded fuel trucks, adding to the lethal force of the blasts.

Wounded and homeless

A source from Sinjar hospital told VOI that "the hospital received scores of injured victims and the hospital corridors were crowded with the wounded."

The blast ripped through hundreds of traditional mud houses, leaving dozens of families homeless and others trapped under the wreckage.

Eyewitnesses describe horrible scenes of panic and destruction, and hospitals continue to receive injured civilians with terrible injuries.

"Words cannot express what happened; it was a disaster that killed and injured hundreds of people," said Qassim Hassan, who was in the company of a critically injured child in an emergency hospital in Duhuk, VOI writes.

"The blast brought destruction to an area of 400 square meters," another eyewitness, who refused to have his name mentioned, told VOI by phone.

Blood donors have streamed into hospitals in Ninewa and Dohuk provinces, AFP reports.

Emergency rooms are overwhelmed with patients, and an estimated 5,000 people have been left homeless, the Guardian reports.

Kurdish authorities in Irbil plan to send food rations for the homeless, and the governor of Ninewa province has promised tent shelters, according to the British daily.

Tensions high

The blast has been publicly condemned by the Iraqi government, the White House, and the US diplomatic and military leadership in Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker issued a joint statement denouncing the "barbaric" attack.

Ashraf Qazi, the top UN representative in Iraq has also denounced the bombings, calling them a “heinous crime.”

US forces pointed to al-Qa'ida as a likely suspect, saying the spectacular car-bomb attack was a typical tactic of the extremist group.

No claim of responsibility has yet emerged. The Qa'ida-linked Islamic State of Iraq had issued a statement last week warning of an attack against Yazidis, the Guardian writes.

The Yazidi minority is routinely threatened by Sunni extremists, and tensions have escalated in recent months with other communities.

In April a 17-year-old Yazidi girl was publicly stoned to death by two thousand angry members of the Yazidi community for having converted to Islam in order to marry a Sunni Arab man.

The “Islamic State of Iraq” claimed responsibility for a massacre of 23 Yazidi workers on a bus in Mosul area later in the month, calling it a reprisal attack for the stoning death of the girl.

Tensions have also run high between elements of the Yazidi community and the Kurdish political parties in Ninewa province and in the northern Kurdish autonomous zone, including a series of killings in Mosul and the Kurdish region as well as arson attacks in April that torched both Yezidi and Kurdish offices.

Areas in Nineva province with significant Yazidi populations are due to vote in an upcoming referendum on whether or not to join the Kurdish autonomous zone, stoking tensions between some Yazidis and Kurds on opposite sides of that political question.

A spokesman for the Kurdish regional administration said the Yazidis are a "threatened minority," adding that Kurdish forces might have protected them from the attacks, the BBC reports.

"But because of the inaction of the government in Baghdad and their inability to protect the population they are suffering the way they are now," he added.

Major General Benjamin Mixon, US commander for northern Iraq had predicted that Ninewa province could transfer to Iraqi control in the next few weeks.

But Yezidi leaders said they feared a withdrawal of US forces would leave them at the mercy of the militants, the Guardian writes.

Sinjar district, 120 km to the northwest of Mosul, is inhabited by the Yazidis, a religious sect whose followers are generally situated in northern Iraq. Some 350,000 Yazidis live in villages around Mosul, 405 km north of Baghdad, VOI writes.

Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. They number around 500,000 individuals in total, but estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs.