Suicide bombers struck a market in northern Iraq and an Iraqi military checkpoint in Baghdad yesterday, killing at least 10 people, while an Iraqi general warned extremists that they will be "smashed under the foot of the Iraqi people" if they resist efforts to end the violence in the country.
In the worst attack, a man wearing an explosives belt strolled into an outdoor market in Tuz Khormato, 210km north of Baghdad, and blew himself up.
The blast occurred just before noon as the market was crowded with shoppers in the city, which has a mixed population with a slight majority of Turkomen. At least eight people were killed and 25 were wounded, police said.
Northern Iraq has seen a recent rise in violence that many blame on insurgents fleeing a security crackdown in the capital that began a month ago.
Shawan Saleh, a Kurd who owns a restaurant near the market, said he rushed to the site and saw bodies lying on the bloodstained pavement, six damaged shops and two burning cars.
"What is the guilt of the people who came to sell or buy fruit and vegetables. There were no military or policemen in the market. It was only innocent civilians. The insurgents want to kill as many as they can. They want to ease the pressure on their fellows in Baghdad," he said.
In western Baghdad, a suicide car bomber slammed into an Iraqi army checkpoint in the Sunni neighborhood of Yarmouk , killing two civilians and wounding four others, police said.
Meanwhile, in a sign of the persistent Sunni resentment that is behind much of the violence, the bodies of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's sons and a grandson were exhumed and reburied near the ousted leader's grave in Ouja, his hometown north of Baghdad. Saddam was hanged on Dec. 30 and buried the next day.
Tribal officials said they decided to move the remains of Odai, 39, and Qusai, 37, and 14-year-old Mustafa -- who died on July 22, 2003, in a gunbattle with US troops in Mosul -- to keep all members of the family in one place.
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