Iraq gunmen execute 23 from tiny sect in apparent revenge attack

BAGHDAD (AP) — Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny Kurdish religious sect, police said, separating out the groups and taking 23 of the passengers away to be shot.
Police said the execution-style killings of the Yazidis — a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians — appeared to be in response to the stoning death of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on a tour abroad to ask the mostly Sunni-led governments of the Arab world to help his struggling government stop the violence in Iraq, said he told Egypt's president that Iraq's reality is "not a civil or sectarian war."
In the northern Iraq killings, armed men in several cars stopped the bus as it was carrying workers from the Mosul Textile Factory to their hometown of Bashika, which has a mixed population of Christians and Yazidis — a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians.
The gunmen checked passengers' identification, then asked the Christians to get off the bus, said police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga.