Iraqi bomb attacks kill 77: police

By Claudia Parsons and Mussab Al-Khairalla

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Bomb attacks killed 77 people in Iraq on Tuesday, including 50 who died in twin truck bombings in the northwestern town of Tal Afar, police said.

Among other attacks, suspected al Qaeda militants killed 21 people in bombings targeting police and Sunni Arab tribes who have formed an alliance against the militants, officials said.

The attacks follow an upsurge in violence in Baghdad and outside the capital in recent days. U.S. and Iraqi security forces have deployed thousands more soldiers in Baghdad to try to stem a sectarian war threatening to tear the country apart.

Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said on Monday al Qaeda was trying to undermine efforts by the Iraqi government and U.S. commanders to court tribal leaders and some insurgent groups to collaborate against the militant network.

One of the blasts in Tal Afar, a mixed town of Shi'ites, Sunni Arabs and Turkmen near the Syrian border, was detonated by a suicide bomber near a Shi'ite mosque, police said.

Police Brigadier Karim Khalaf al-Jubouri said the bomber lured victims to buy wheat loaded on his truck. A second truck bomb exploded in a used car lot. The attacks wounded 120 people.

"There was a huge bomb in the street," said one resident, Akram Ali, 27, referring to the attack near the mosque.

"More than 20 shops and houses were destroyed and some are still burning. Firemen are pulling bodies from the rubble."

In 2006, President Bush held up Tal Afar as an example of progress being made in Iraq after U.S.-led forces freed it from al Qaeda in an offensive the previous year.

In another blow to Bush, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday endorsed a March 31, 2008, target date for withdrawing American combat troops from Iraq, moving Congress a step closer to a showdown with the president who has vowed to veto any legislation setting dates for a troop pullout.

Near Ramadi, in western Anbar province, a suicide bomber exploded a car outside a restaurant on a main road, killing 17 people and wounding 32, a hospital source said.

The restaurant was frequented by police in an area where local tribes have joined the tribal alliance against al Qaeda in Anbar. Many police were among the casualties, the hospital source said.

INSURGENT LEADER KILLED

Earlier four people were killed in two blasts in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. One of the dead was a military leader of one of Iraq's biggest Sunni Arab insurgent groups, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, the group said in an Internet statement.

The group identified the leader as Harith al-Dari, who is also the son of an anti-al Qaeda tribal leader.