A shaken Iraqi symbol

BAGHDAD - Two truck bombs shattered markets in Tal Afar yesterday, killing at least 63 people and wounding dozens in the second assault in four days on a predominantly Shiite Muslim city hit by a resurgence in violence a year after it was held up as a symbol of U.S. success.

After the bombings, suspected Sunni insurgents tried to ambush ambulances carrying the injured out of the northwestern city, but were driven off by police gunfire, Iraqi authorities said.

The carnage was the worst bloodshed in a day that saw attacks across Iraq.

A major Sunni Arab insurgent group, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, reported that its military leader was slain outside Baghdad, an assault likely to deepen an increasingly bloody rift between al-Qaeda in Iraq and opponents of the terror group in Sunni communities west of the capital.

In Baghdad, a U.S. soldier and an American working as a U.S. government contractor were killed by a rocket attack on the heavily guarded Green Zone, U.S. officials said. Another contract worker suffered serious wounds, and three were slightly wounded. A soldier also was wounded. The identities of the dead were not released.

A U.S. Marine died during combat operations in Anbar province, a hotbed of Sunni Arab insurgents west of Baghdad, the military said in a statement.

Iraqi police reported at least 109 people killed or found dead nationwide. The toll included two elderly sisters - both Chaldean Catholic nuns in the increasingly tense city of Kirkuk - who were stabbed multiple times in what appeared to be a sectarian killing.

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 second 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.

"I instantly saw smoke, then I heard the blast," Akram said. "Thanks be to God the blast didn't occur during rush hour at the school."

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, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. and Iraqi forces put up sand barriers around Tal Afar to limit access, the city has suffered frequent insurgent attacks, with yesterday's 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.

Also yesterday, suicide car bombers struck northeast of Ramadi, killing 10 people, and in Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, killing two police officers and wounding four people, police said.

base just north of Karmah, a small town west of Baghdad, and killed as many as 15 attackers, the U.S. military reported. It said eight soldiers were wounded; seven of them returned to duty after treatment by medics at

the site, and one soldier was hospitalized.

a two-day Arab League summit that opens today in Saudi Arabia, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani appealed for them to "shoulder their legitimate, ethical and national responsibilities toward Iraq and to never abandon its people."

- Associated Press

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