2 truck bombs in Iraqi city kill at least 48

BAGHDAD – Two nearly simultaneous truck bombs – including one detonated by remote control – ripped through markets in Tal Afar on Tuesday, killing at least 48 people and wounding dozens, police said, as violence surged outside the Iraqi capital.\nA suicide car bomber exploded his payload near Ramadi, killing 10 people, and another attacker detonated his explosives-laden car near a police patrol in Baqouba, killing two policemen.\nThe attacks in Tal Afar, the second in four days, occurred about five minutes apart at popular markets in the northern and central parts of the city, 260 miles northwest of Baghdad.\nAt least 48 people were killed and 103 wounded, police Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri said.\nOne of the trucks was detonated by remote control while people gathered to buy the flour it was carrying in the central Shiite neighborhood of Muhyou, a local policeman said. The other truck was loaded with vegetables and parked near a wholesale market, not far from a primary school that was closed for the day.\nJaafar Akram, a teacher who saw that explosion, said he helped the police and other civilians carry the wounded to vehicles taking them to the hospital.\n“I instantly saw smoke then I heard the blast,” Akram said, adding that body parts were thrown on the ground and the walls and vegetables were scattered in pools of blood.\n“Thanks be to God the blast didn’t occur during rush hour at the school,” he said. “That reduced the disaster.”\nTal Afar was an insurgent stronghold until U.S. and Iraqi troops drove them out in a September 2006 operation and constructed huge sand barriers around the city to limit access.\nBush cited that operation, in which insurgents melted away into the countryside rather than fight, as an example that gave him “confidence in our strategy.”\nTuesday’s vehicle bombings and an eruption of sectarian clashes south of Baghdad underscored concerns that militants have fled the capital in response to a U.S.-led security crackdown, bringing violence with them to the hinterlands.\nThe suicide car bomber near Ramadi struck a district northeast of the provincial capital that was not patrolled by the military, police Col. Tarik Yousif said.\nAnother suicide car bomber struck a police patrol in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding four other people, police said.