At least 120 dead in two suicide attacks in northern Iraq (3rd Lead)

Jul 7, 2007, 11:51 GMT

Iraqi people transfer a wounded man to a hospital in Kirkuk, north of Baghdad, 07 July 2007. At least 120 people were killed in two suicide attacks Friday evening and early Saturday in northern Iraq, according to witnesses and hospital sources. EPA/KHALIL AL-A\'NEI

Baghdad - At least 120 people were killed in two suicide attacks Friday evening and early Saturday in northern Iraq, according to witnesses and hospital sources.

At least 100 Iraqis were killed Saturday and more than 80 injured when a truck bomb blast rocked a busy market in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato in Tikrit province, 170 kilometres north of the capital Baghdad.

One of the initial figures placed the number of deaths at 30 but Hassan Zein al-Abbedin, the head of Tikrit's health department, told reporters that the number of dead has risen to 100 because of the blast's intensity.

Iraq's Interior Ministry, which is usually more cautious in announcing the number of victims following an attack, did not yet disclose an official count.

At least 20 people were killed and 20 injured in Khanaqin, 180 kilometres north-east of Baghdad, when a suicide bomber drove a vehicle into a funeral cortege Friday evening, police sources said.

Khanaqin is populated mainly by Kurds, but is in Diyala province and outside the Kurdish autonomous region where the security situation is more stable.

Also Saturday, the US military announced that at least four US servicemen were killed and six wounded in operations across the Iraqi capital.

In one incident, a soldier was killed on Friday when a roadside bomb struck his patrol south-east of Baghdad, the US military said. An Iraqi interpreter was also killed while three US soldiers were wounded.

Also on Friday, two soldiers were killed and three wounded by a roadside bomb in eastern Baghdad while another US soldier was killed by a bomb in the west of the capital on Thursday.