Who comited the masacre of 1st february in Erbil 22 years ago

1. What happened that morning — the attack and its human toll

Two near-simultaneous suicide bombings struck reception areas of the KDP and PUK in Erbil as party officials greeted visitors for the Eid al-Adha festival, detonations that Kurdish reporting and international outlets say killed over 100 people and wounded hundreds — contemporaneous counts and later commemorations place fatalities between about 101 and 117 and report large numbers of injured ^{[1] [2] [5] [3] [6]}.

2. Who claimed, who investigators identified, and how reporting diverges

Local Kurdish commemorations and Kurdish media explicitly attribute the attacks to Ansar al-Islam, describing suicide bombers who entered party offices and blew themselves up within minutes of each other ^{[1] [2]}; major aggregations and encyclopedic entries (Britannica, Wikipedia) likewise say Islamic extremists or Ansar al-Sunnah/Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility ^{[7] [3] [8]}. Human Rights Watch framed the bombings as part of a broader pattern by Iraqi insurgents targeting civilians, a formulation that emphasizes the insurgent milieu rather than a single hierarchical organization ^[4].

3. How credible is the Ansar al-Islam attribution?

Multiple Kurdish institutions and survivor accounts have long identified Ansar al-Islam as the group behind the operation, and that attribution is reflected in regional commemorations and local journalism ^{[1] [2] [9]}. International human-rights reporting and contemporary news coverage characterized the bombings as the work of Islamist or Iraqi insurgents, which is consistent with Ansar-linked tactics — suicide bombings against political targets — though Human Rights Watch focused more on the insurgency-wide campaign rather than naming a single perpetrator publicly in its immediate statement ^{[4] [6]}.

4. Alternative formulations and ambiguities in the record

Some reporting uses broader terms — “Iraqi insurgents” or “Islamic extremist groups” — instead of a single organizational name, and some English-language summaries and later encyclopedic updates cite Ansar al-Sunnah or other variants, reflecting both shifting nomenclature and the fragmented nature of insurgent networks in 2004 ^{[4] [3]}. Where sources differ, the divergence appears to be terminological and evidentiary: local Kurdish authorities and memorial narratives are definitive about Ansar al-Islam, while international watchdogs and press sometimes emphasize the insurgent campaign without a single-group claim ^{[1] [4] [6]}.

5. Why the question of responsibility matters politically and historically

Attributing the massacre to Ansar al-Islam has domestic political weight: Kurdish leaders and institutions have used the event in ceremonies to underscore unity and the existential threat from Islamist militants, a narrative sustained in annual remembrances and official statements ^{[9] [5]}. International observers framing the bombings as part of a wider insurgency stress patterns of civilian-targeting violence in post-2003 Iraq, which shifts attention from a discrete group to the chaotic security environment that enabled such attacks ^{[4] [6]}.

6. Conclusion — the best-supported answer from available reporting

Based on the preponderance of Kurdish commemorations, contemporaneous news reports, encyclopedia summaries, and human-rights accounts provided here, the February 1, 2004 Erbil massacre is most commonly and credibly attributed to Islamist insurgents, with local sources and many summaries specifically identifying Ansar al-Islam ^{[1] [2] [7] [3] [4]}. Where international sources speak more generally of “Iraqi insurgents,” that reflects either evidentiary caution or emphasis on the broader insurgent campaign rather than a contradiction of the Kurdish attribution ^{[4] [6]}.