Bombs killed nearly 60 people in Iraq on Thursday in the worst violence since US combat troops withdrew from urban areas last week, and American forces released five Iranian officials suspected of aiding Shiite insurgents. US officials said they believe the Iranians, detained in northern Iraq in January 2007, had facilitated attacks on American-led forces but handed them over to the Iraqi government at its request because they were obliged to do so under a US-Iraqi security agreement. The US State Department said it was concerned their release could present a security threat to US troops in Iraq. The most lethal attack Thursday was in the northern city of Tal Afar, where women sat in the street amid torn and bloodied bodies in the aftermath of suicide bombings, wailing and beating their chests in grief. The day's violence began at 6.30 A.M., when a suicide bomber in a police uniform and carrying a radio and a pistol knocked on the door of an investigator in the anti-terrorism police force in Tal Afar. When the officer opened the door, the bomber detonated his explosive belt, killing the officer, his wife and son, said Maj. Gen. Khalid Al-Hamadani, police chief of the northern Ninevah province. As people gathered in the aftermath, another suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt, Al-Hamadani said. The coordinated attack killed a total of 38 people and injured 66. Insurgents also struck Baghdad on Thursday, detonating bombs that killed 18 people and injured dozens. Eight of them died and 30 were injured in coordinated blasts near an outdoor market in the Shiite district of Sadr City, said Maj. Gen. Qassim Al-Mousawi, spokesman for the city's operations command center.
