Suicide bomb blasts Iraqi village

TUZ KHORMATO, Iraq – A suicide truck bomber blasted a Shiite town north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing more than 100 people, police said, in a sign Sunni insurgents are pulling away from a U.S. offensive around the capital to attack where security is thinner.\nThe marketplace devastation underlined a hard reality in Iraq: There are not enough forces to protect everywhere. U.S. troops, already increased by 28,000 this year, are focused on bringing calm to Baghdad, while the Iraqi military and police remain overstretched and undertrained.\nThe top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, told The Associated Press he expected Sunni extremists to try to “pull off a variety of sensational attacks and grab the headlines to create a ‘mini-Tet.’”\nHe was referring to the 1968 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Tet offensive that undermined public support for the Vietnam War in the United States.\nThe U.S. military on Saturday also reported that eight American service members were killed in fighting in Baghdad and western Anbar province over two days, reflecting the increased U.S. casualties that have come with the new offensives. A British soldier was killed in fighting with Shiite militias overnight in the southern city of Basra.\nIn Saturday’s attack – among the deadliest this year in Iraq – the truck detonation ripped through the market in the farming town of Armili at around 8:30 a.m., as crowds gathered for morning shopping.\nIt demolished several dozen old mud-brick homes and shops, burying dozens of people under the rubble, and set cars on fire, survivors said.\nWhile residents and police dug through the wreckage for hours, victims were ferried in farmers’ pickup trucks 30 miles to the nearest hospital, in Tuz Khormato.\nWeeping and screaming relatives searched Tuz Khormato’s hospital frantically for word of loved ones. 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.\nAbdullah Jabara, deputy governor of Salahuddin province where the town is located, told Iraqi state television that 115 died – nearly three-quarters of them women, children and elderly – and blamed al-Qaida. Police gave a similar death toll, along with more than 200 wounded, though Tuz Khormato’s police chief, Col. Abbas Mohammed Amin, put the toll at 150 dead.\nThe attack’s location suggested it was carried out by Sunni extremists fleeing the three-week old U.S. offensive centered at the city of Baqouba, 60 miles to the south on Baghdad’s northern doorstep. The sweep aims to uproot al-Qaida militants and Sunni insurgents using the area to stage car bomb attacks in the capital.\nBut U.S. commanders acknowledge that many insurgents fled Baqouba before the assault, and they may have found easier ground for attacks further north.\n“Because of the recent American military operations, terrorists found a good hideout in Salahuddin province, especially in the outskirts areas in which there isn’t enough number of military forces there,” said Ahmed al-Jubouri, an aide of the provincial governor.\nArmili, 100 miles north of Baghdad, is a town of 26,000, mostly Shiites from Iraq’s Turkoman ethnic minority. Residents say tensions are constantly high with Sunni Arabs who dominate the surrounding villages. Iraqi security presence is scant in the remote region, near the border with neighboring Diyala province.