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Blasts kill 142, injure 278 Iraqis
northern Iraq in the past two days, witnesses and hospital sources say.
At least 105 Iraqis were killed Saturday and more than 250 injured when a truck bomb blast rocked a busy market in the northern town of Tuz Khurmato in Tikrit province, 170 kilometers 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 105 because of the blast`s intensity.
The casualty toll was confirmed by Dr Wissam Abdullah, director of the main local hospital, who said the wounded had been taken to at least six emergency rooms up to 100 kilometres (60 miles) away around the region.
The chief local civilian administrator, Hamad Rasheed, said he had seen reports that up to 125 people could be confirmed dead after rescuers finish digging through the rubble of dozens of buildings.
"The security reports that I have received from the scene confirm that 115 were killed, five are missing and around five more were collected as loose flesh. Some 40 homes, 20 shops and 10 vehicles were destroyed," Rasheed said.
"The corpses were under the debris of the collapsed buildings. Some were burnt and others were torn apart. This is a big disaster for the town, all of the casualties were civilians," he added.
Abdullah said the dead and wounded had been brought to the emergency room at his hospital in Tuz Khurmatu, to two hospitals in the provincial capital Kirkuk and two more as far away as the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.
The attack was the deadliest to hit Iraq since since April 18, when 190 people were killed in a spate of car bombings against Shiia districts of Baghdad.
Police Captain Nuzad Abdallah said the early morning attack occurred when the market was crowded with people. Three children were brought alive out of the debris but died before they could be taken for medical treatment.
At least 20 people were killed and 20 injured in Khanaqin, 180 kilometers 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 near Khanaqin, a local police source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq that 17 people were killed and eight wounded in an overnight suicide attack in the remote village of Gluelaa.
The attacker, driving an explosives-packed car, targeted a local market, causing major damage to shops and vehicles in the vicinity.