150 Iraqis feared dead in bombing

A suicide bomber drove a load of watermelons and vegetables to the center of a village marketplace in northern Iraq on Saturday and then detonated his large yellow truck, killing as many as 150 people in what appeared to be the deadliest attack yet in a year of unremitting violence.

Officials said they feared that the region where the blast occurred, already marked by ethnic tensions, had been singled out by insurgents fleeing U.S.-led military operations in other hotspots across Iraq.

The truck bomb, packed with nails and metal, leveled dozens of homes and shops in the village of Amerli, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, witnesses said. Many people were buried under the debris, they said.

Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin, police chief in the regional center of Tuz Khurmatu, 12 miles to the north, said 150 people were killed and 250 wounded. That toll would exceed that of the previous most deadly single attacks, market bombings on April 18 and Feb. 3 in Baghdad that each killed an estimated 140 people.

The area is estimated to be 40% Kurd, 40% Turkmen and 20% Arab. Kurds want it annexed to the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. It is one of many disputes Iraqi leaders must resolve over territories where Saddam Hussein displaced Kurds and settled Arabs in the 1970s and ‘80s.

But as Kurds, who are mostly Sunni, seek to consolidate their hold on the oil-rich north, the region’s Shiite Turkmen population fears its further marginalization. Some Turkmens support radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, an Arab whose Al Mahdi militia has been implicated in sectarian killings in Baghdad.

In August 2003, the rancor simmering beneath the surface in Tuz Khurmatu exploded into riots pitting Kurds and Turkmens against each other in a dispute over a religious shrine. About a dozen people were killed.

A senior Turkmen politician said he feared that Al Qaeda in Iraq militants on the run from former strongholds had been added to the mix and were intent on hitting vulnerable targets.

“The attackers are Al Qaeda terrorist members who have started to flee from Baghdad and Baqubah after military operations,” said Abbas Bayati, a member of the parliament.

The U.S. military launched a major offensive last month in neighboring Diyala province to end militants’ control over western neighborhoods of Baqubah, the provincial capital.

A U.S. military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the bombings such as Saturday’s attack appeared to be attempts to provoke religious and ethnic strife, as well as to flex Al Qaeda’s muscle in a territory with a minimal American military presence.

“We’ve seen in the past that these kinds of attacks happen in areas to foster the ability to grab headlines as well as to incite sectarian strife,” the senior military official said.

In early June, militants disabled a bridge linking Tuz Khurmatu to a main road into Baghdad, raising concern among residents that the U.S. offensive was driving fighters into their region.

A similar bombing in March in Tall Afar, a town near the Syrian border that also has a large Turkmen population, left more than 80 dead. Shoppers were lured to their death by the promise of free flour from the back of a truck. That blast triggered a killing rampage the next day by off-duty Shiite police officers, some of whom lost loved ones in the explosion. The reprisal attack claimed the lives of 70 Sunnis.

Residents of Amerli said a yellow Hyundai truck stocked with watermelons and vegetables pulled up in the middle of the market Saturday morning.

One resident, Amir Bayati, said the potential for a bargain drew a crowd, and the bomber detonated his explosives. About 30 houses and 20 shops were leveled, residents said.

“I was close to the middle of the market when a violent explosion hit the place and the sky filled with black smoke,” Bayati said. “When I arrived at the spot, I saw pieces of human bodies on the ground.... My brother Khalid was dead under the rubble.

“This is our destiny in the new Iraq, to get killed according to our [religious or ethnic] identity,” he said.

Bayati said he saw a 5-year-old girl whose head had been cut open by shrapnel from the truck bomb.

A woman wounded in the attack, Fatima Abdullah, told The Times from her hospital bed that she could remember the truck blowing up and wounding her daughter. Other witnesses said dozens of women and children had been trapped beneath collapsed buildings. Many of the injured were taken to Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu.

The blast occurred hours after a car bomb killed 22 Shiite Kurds in a remote northeastern corner of Diyala province near the border with Iran.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military reported the deaths of three U.S. troops. Two soldiers were killed Friday in a bomb blast while on foot patrol south of Baghdad, and one died Saturday when a bomb exploded near his vehicle in Salahuddin province, north of the capital.

A British soldier died during an operation in the southern port city of Basra, and a soldier from Fiji died in a noncombat incident, the British military said.

In Baghdad, the bodies of 19 men were discovered, most of them on the western side of the Tigris River, a hotly contested territory for Iraq’s Shiite elite and Sunni minority.

On the political front, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki told reporters that Sadr’s movement needed to confront wayward members of its Al Mahdi militia.

“I call upon the brothers of the Sadr movement to take clear and decisive decisions in order not to bear the responsibly of those using its name in killing, terrorism and outlawed acts everywhere,” Maliki said after meeting with President Jalal Talabani.

In some of his harshest criticism yet of the Shiite movement that helped him secure the premiership, Maliki said Sadr’s group had been infiltrated by Saddam Hussein loyalists.

Sadr’s supporters, who have quit Maliki’s government and are boycotting the parliament, rejected his accusation and contended that they were cracking down on any rebel elements.

“The Sadr movement is with the political process and against the violence and terrorism,” said Salam Maliki, a member of Sadr’s bloc in the parliament. But, the lawmaker added defiantly, “In the current situation of chaos ... and with the presence of the occupation forces, self-defense is acceptable because the government is unable to protect the people.”

The prime minister also championed the campaign to form a new bloc of political parties that could push through legislation aimed at promoting reconciliation among Iraqis. The legislative effort so far has been blocked by the more extreme elements within the Sunni and Shiite parliament blocs.

ned.parker@latimes.com

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Times staff writers Wail Alhafith, Saif Rasheed and Raheem Salman, and a special correspondent in Kirkuk contributed to this report.