Dozens dead in Iraq suicide blast

Children killed in attack on Shia area of Tal Afar.

Map of Iraq showing Baghdad and Tal Afar
The attacker drove a dump truck filled with explosives and covered with construction materials said Brigadier-General Rahim al-Jibouri, commander of Tal Afar police.
 
“I was sitting at home when I saw a big truck speeding along. I  went outside to watch and suddenly it exploded, its contents flung  everywhere,” Abu Qassim said from his hospital bed in the northern city of Mosul.
 
“My house was destroyed. My wife and four of my children were injured as well as me,” he said.
 
Within an hour of the attack in the Saadeh district, the authorities imposed a complete curfew on the city, al-Jibouri said.
 
Roadside bomb
 
Tal Afar – a town which the US military initially cited as a success story after it said its operations cleared the city of Sunni fighters – has been the site of frequent attacks in the past year.
 
Many of them stemmed from allegations by a 50-year-old Sunni Arab woman, who said last February that Iraqi soldiers raped her when they raided her house searching for weapons.
 
Sunni fighters have kidnapped and killed dozens of Iraqi security officials in response.
 
Meanwhile in Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed at least five people and wounded eight during rush hour, police said.
 
The bomb had been planted at the Zaafaraniyah intersection in the Jisr Diyala area, a predominantly Shia area.
 
The device, hidden on the side of the road, blew up after a minibus stopped to collect waiting passengers in the Diyala Bridge  neighbourhood in the southern suburbs, security officials said.
 
Shrapnel sprayed the area as Iraqis got on and off the bus shortly before the main rush hour.
 
In the Sunni Arab heartland north of the capital, mortar rounds crashed through private homes, killing six civilians and wounding another 17 in the town of Dhuluiyah, the local police chief and hospital director said.
Source: News Agencies