Suicide Truck Bomb Kills 100 In Iraq
Suicide Truck Bomb Kills 100 in Iraq
http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8Q7TDKG0.html
(Gold9472: 100 different people. 100 different families. It's horrible.)
By YAHYA BARZANJI
Jul 7, 2:07 PM (ET)
TUZ KHORMATO, Iraq (AP) - A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives in the market of a Shiite farm town on Saturday, killing more than 100 people and levelling nearby mud-brick buildings, police officials said.
Separately, eight American troops and a British soldier were killed in fighting over two days.
The blast north of Baghdad, hours after a smaller suicide bombing in another Shiite village killed more than 20, suggested Sunni militants are regrouping to launch attacks in regions further away from the capital where security is thinner.
Saturday morning's explosion ripped through a market in Armili. Farmers' pickup trucks drove victims 30 miles to the nearest hospital, in Tuz Khormato.
Authorities and residents spent hours digging bodies out of the rubble of two dozen shops and houses, police said. Accounts of the final toll varied, hampered by the difficulty of the search and the town's remote location.
Abdullah Jabara, the deputy governor of Salahuddin province, told state-run Iraqiya television that 115 people died - nearly three-quarters of them women, children and elderly. He blamed al-Qaida.
Police Col. Sherzad Abdullah, an officer in the Tuz Khormato police, also said 115 were killed and some 200 wounded. Tuz Khormato's police chief, Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin, put the toll at 150 dead.
Weeping and screaming relatives search frantically for word of loved ones at Tuz Khormato's hospital. Ali Hussein read the names of victims being moved further north to Kirkuk for treatment. "My cousin died in the explosion, but I don't know the fate of my brother," he said in tears.
Armirli, 100 miles north of Baghdad, is a town of 26,000, mostly Shiites from Iraq's Turkoman ethnic minority. Residents said tensions were constantly high with Sunni Arabs who dominate the surrounding villages. Iraqi security presence is scant in the region, in a remote corner of Salahuddin province.
The night before, a suicide bomber detonated a boobytrapped car at a funeral in the Shiite Kurdish village of Zargosh, in neighboring Diyala province, police said.
The blast killed 22 people and wounded 17, said the head of Diyala provincial council, Ibrahim Bajilan, and a police official in the provincial capital of Baqouba, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. The village is home to about 30 Kurdish families who had been expelled under Saddam Hussein and returned after his fall.
In Baghdad - where attacks have fallen in recent weeks - a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed minibus by an Iraqi army patrol in the eastern Zayouna district Saturday, killing five soldiers and a civilian, police said.
The U.S. military in Iraq, beefed up by new deployments this year, is conducting an intensified security crackdown in the capital aimed at bringing calm to Baghdad. At the same time, U.S. forces are fighting south of Baghdad and to the north, around Baqouba, aiming to uproot al-Qaida fighters and other Sunni insurgents who use the areas as staging ground for attacks in the capital.
American commanders acknowledge many insurgent leaders fled Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, just ahead of the U.S. assault there.
"Because of the recent American military operations, terrorists found a good hideout in Salahuddin province, especially in outlying areas where there aren't enough military forces," said Ahmed al-Jubouri, an aide of the province's governor.
The U.S. military on Saturday announced the deaths of eight U.S. servicemembers in combat, most in the Baghdad area.
Four soldiers were killed in two roadside bomb attacks on their patrols, both in the capital, the military said. A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed Friday when an explosively formed penetrator exploded near their patrol in southeastern Baghdad. Explosively formed penetrators are high-tech bombs that the U.S. believes are provided by Iran, a charge denied by Tehran.
On Thursday, two Marines were killed in western Anbar province and a soldier died in Baghdad, the latest military statement said. Another soldier died Friday of non battle-related cause and his death is under investigation, the military said.
In the far south of Iraq, British troops came under heavy attack by militants in Basra, killing one soldier, the British military said Saturday.
Britain has withdrawn hundreds of troops from Iraq, leaving a force of around 5,500 based mainly on the fringes of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. British bases come under frequent mortar attacks from Shiite militias. The U.S. currently has about 155,000 troops in Iraq.
