Truck bombs kill 50 in Iraqi city of Tal Afar

Story Highlights

• NEW: Two truck bombings foiled in Anbar province
• NEW: Tribal leader killed when insurgents attack father's house
• Fifty killed and 103 hurt in two bombings in markets in Iraqi city of Tal Afar
• Car bomb kills 10 on main street near Ramadi

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BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Two truck bombs Tuesday killed at least 50 people in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar.

The explosions targeted markets in the northern and central parts of the city, the mayor said.

Tal Afar Mayor Najam Abdulla -- who said another 103 people were wounded -- said the blasts came within a few minutes of each other.

Tal Afar, near the Syrian border in Nineveh province, is a predominantly Turkmen community with both Sunnis and Shiites.

A year ago, President Bush touted Tal Afar as an example of a place where U.S.-led coalition efforts were succeeding.

"In this city, we see the outlines of the Iraq that we and the Iraqi people have been fighting for," Bush said in a March 20, 2006, speech in Cleveland, Ohio.

Also Tuesday in Tal Afar, police said they killed two militants on Monday in a house used as a factory to make explosives belts. One of the militants in the raid was wearing an explosives belt, police said.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside a pastry shop in Tal Afar, killing at least 10 people and wounding three, according to the mayor.

Two truck bombings foiled, U.S. says

The U.S. military said it foiled two suicide truck bombings Monday north of Karma in volatile Anbar province, though the bombs did detonate. (Watch CNN's Arwa Damon come under small-arms fire while accompanying a U.S. patrol )

A water truck exploded after a U.S. soldier stopped it trying to enter a coalition compound without authorization, the Pentagon said.

After the blast, about 30 insurgents "engaged the compound with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars" and U.S. soldiers fought back with small arms, mortars and artillery, the military said.

Soldiers also stopped a dump truck as it also tried to get into the compound, and again it was detonated outside the base, the military reported.

At least 15 insurgents were killed and eight U.S. troops wounded, the military said.

Suicide blast kills 10 in Ramadi

Farther south in Ramadi on Tuesday, a suicide bomb was detonated near a restaurant outside a shopping area on a main thoroughfare in the Albu Thaib district, Col. Tareq al-Thibawi said.

Ten civilians were killed and 25 were wounded, he said.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been targeting the area west of Baghdad, where local tribes have taken on the militants.

The tribes are affiliated with the Anbar Salvation Council, which tribal leaders formed nine months ago. The council opposes al Qaeda in Iraq and has the backing of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.

The blast came a day after security and coalition forces started "a major operation to clear al Qaeda" from parts of Ramadi, the U.S. military said.

In other violence Tuesday, four civilians were killed and 14 wounded when four mortar rounds fell in Baghdad's Abu Disher section, police said. The Shiite enclave is in the middle of the Sunni-dominated Dora neighborhood.

Two police officers were killed in separate incidents in the Iraqi capital. One died and two others were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a patrol in southwestern Baghdad, and the other officer was found shot to death in his car in eastern Baghdad's Zayouna area.

Police in the northern city of Kirkuk said two Christian women were found stabbed to death there.

The Associated Press reported the women were elderly Chaldean Catholic nuns. Kirkuk police told the AP that the women, ages 79 and 85, were stabbed at home, where they lived alone, and that there was no sign of a robbery.

South of the capital in Najaf province, a Najaf city mayoral official told CNN that U.S. troops raided the house of an aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, resulting in the deaths of two civilians.

But the U.S. military told CNN that it has "no reports of any raids."

Dozens of Iraqi police fall ill after dinner

At least 100 Iraqi police fell sick after having dinner Tuesday at the Police Academy Headquarters in central Baghdad, an official with the Iraqi Interior Ministry told CNN.

The official said the sickened police officers were sent to at least three hospitals in the capital for treatment.

The investigation is still under way to find out what caused the illnesses, the official said, adding that samples of the food and water were being tested.

Other developments

A U.S. soldier and a U.S. government contractor were killed Tuesday in a rocket attack on Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, U.S. officials said. The victims' names were not released.

Militants Tuesday attacked the home of a Sunni tribal leader who opposes al Qaeda in Iraq, killing his son. An Iraqi Interior Ministry official told CNN the militants attacked the house of Dhahir al-Dhari, leader of the al-Zobaa tribe. His son Sheikh Harith Dhahir al-Dhari, a tribal leader in his own right, was killed.

The new leader of U.S. Central Command says Iraq isn't engulfed in a civil war, and there are signs of hope outside strife-torn Baghdad. But the country needs "more pervasive security" -- as well as a more efficient and responsive government -- before the United States starts withdrawing troops, says Adm. William J. Fallon, whose command covers the Middle East, central Asia and eastern Africa. (Full story)

The U.S. military said Tuesday a U.S. Marine died Saturday during combat operations in Anbar province. Since the start of the war, the U.S. military has suffered 3,242 fatalities in Iraq, including seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department.

CNN's Basim Mahdi and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

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