Bombs kill dozens at Iraqi markets

(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-28 13:17

Most of the bloodshed in Tal Afar came when an explosives-laden truck was detonated by remote control as people gathered to buy flour it was carrying in the center of town, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad. A few minutes earlier, a truck loaded with vegetables blew up near a wholesale market on the city's north side.

Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri, a spokesman for the provincial police, said the first blast killed at least 62 people and wounded 150. The other bomb killed one person and wounded four, he said.

Insurgents waiting in cars on Tal Afar's outskirts tried to intercept ambulances carrying the wounded to hospitals in nearby Mosul but fled when police escorts opened fire, said Husham al-Hamdani, head of the security committee in Mosul.

Jaafar Akram, a teacher at a school near the smaller explosion, said body parts were scattered about and vegetables lay in pools of blood.

"Thanks be to God the blast didn't occur during rush hour at the school," he said.

On Saturday, a man wearing an explosives belt blew himself up outside a pastry shop in Tal Afar's central market area, killing at least 10 people and wounding three.

Tal Afar, which is about 90 miles east of the Syrian border, is inhabited mainly by ethnic Turkomen. About 60 percent of the residents are Shiite Muslims and the rest Sunni.

The city was an insurgent stronghold until an offensive by US and Iraqi troops in September 2005, when rebel fighters fled into the countryside without a battle. Last March, President Bush cited the operation as an example that gave him "confidence in our strategy."

But even though US and Iraqi forces put up sand barriers around Tal Afar to limit access, the city has suffered frequent insurgent attacks -- Tuesday's was the deadliest since the war started. Among the largest previous attacks were suicide bombings that killed 20 people on Sept. 18 and 30 on Oct. 11, 2005.

In other bombings Tuesday, suicide car bombers struck northeast of Ramadi, killing 10 people, and in Baqouba, northeast of Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding four people, police said.

The vehicle bombings and an outbreak of sectarian clashes in southern Iraq underscored concerns that militants have fled the capital in response to the security crackdown, bringing violence with them to the hinterlands.

Nationwide, the number of deaths from car bombs has decreased slightly since the Baghdad security operation began Feb. 14, but it has more than doubled in areas outside the capital, according to an Associated Press tally.

Car bombs killed at least 349 people in Baghdad in the six weeks since the crackdown began, down from 525 such deaths in the preceding six weeks. But the numbers killed by car bombs outside the capital jumped from at least 100 in the earlier period to at least 233 in the latest six weeks.

In an interview with CNBC, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, a top US commander in Iraq, said it was too early to say how long the expanded US troop presence accompanying the Baghdad operation will be needed. He said it depended on how soon Iraqi forces can take on all responsibility for security.

"I believe that within five to six to eight months, we'll be able to make a good assessment of where they are in building their capacity, and based on that, we'll be able to make a decision on how long this surge will go," he said.

The Sunni insurgent group known as 1920 Revolution Brigades said its military leader, Harith Dhaher al-Dhari, was killed in Abu Ghraib just west of Baghdad. An Iraqi district official said attackers fired rocket-propelled grenades at the man's car, but the US military said suicide car bombers attacked his house.

The attack came as the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is reportedly making progress rallying Sunni Arab tribesmen into joining the fight against al-Qaida members in Anbar province west of the capital. Al-Dhari's group is among those rumored to be taking part in secret talks with the government.

Al-Qaida has responded with bomb attacks targeting leaders and key supporters of the tribes allied against them.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, police 1st Lt. Marewan Salih said the slain nuns -- 79-year-old Margaret Naoum and 85-year-old Fawzeiyah Naoum, 85 -- were killed in their home near the Cathedral of the Virgin. They lived alone and there was no sign of a robbery, he said.

One was stabbed seven times as she stood in the garden just outside the house, while the other was stabbed three times while lying on the sofa inside as she was recovering from eye surgery last week.

Chaldean Catholics are an ancient Eastern rite now united with Roman Catholicism. Adherents live mainly in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq and most speak a dialect of Turkish.

In Baghdad, US Charge d'Affaires Daniel Speckhard said a rocket attack killed an American contract worker in the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area that is home to the US Embassy and Iraqi government offices. The US military said an American soldier also was killed and a second soldier suffered unspecified wounds.


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