Two truck bombs struck separate communities north of Iraq's capital Saturday, killing at least 16 people in the latest attacks that indicate insurgents are targeting relatively unprotected areas as security forces focus on defending the cities. Saturday's deadliest attack came at about 8 A.M. when a suicide truck bomber attacked a small police station in the remote village of Hamad north of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people, including six police, said officials from the Iraqi army and police. Police attempted to stop the truck, opening fire and forcing the attacker to change direction and slam into a concrete barrier near a market, they said. The blast damaged the police station and a number of nearby homes and shops, the officials said. Fifteen people were also wounded in the attack, said the police official. Hamad is a primarily Sunni village that lies on the edge of Shirqat, a town between Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit and Mosul, which the US military considers to be the last urban stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The attack comes three days after Iraqi police defused a car bomb in the same area, said Shirqat's police chief, Ali Al-Jubouri. “I think this attack is in retaliation for what we did,” he said. The second attack occurred near Mosul in the city of Sinjar, where a parked truck bomb that exploded at about 10:15 A.M. killed at least four people and wounded 23 others, another police official said. The attack follows a double suicide bombing earlier this month in Sinjar that devastated a cafe packed with young people in northwestern Iraq, killing at least 21 people. Iraq has demanded Syria hand over two suspects wanted in those bombings, raising tensions between the two countries that led each side to recall their respective ambassadors. “We are dealing with the crisis, containing it and preventing any further escalation or tension,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Saturday during a joint press conference with the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. Mottaki said Iran would work with both countries, who are its allies, to resolve the tensions. “We will spare no efforts to offer support,” he said. Zebari said Iraq's government plans to ask the United Nations to back the creation of an international court to try those accused in the Baghdad bombings. Saturday's attacks came as thousands of mourners gathered in the streets in the southern Shiite holy city of Najaf for the arrival of the body of Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, one Iraq's most powerful Shiite leaders. The casket's arrival ended a two-day funeral procession through Iran and portions of Iraq's Shiite heartland before burial in Najaf. Al-Hakim, who died Wednesday of lung cancer in Tehran, was a powerbroker who help pave the path for the re-emergence of Iraq's Shiite political majority after decades of oppression under Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime. Also Saturday, Kurdish authorities distributed 850,000 copies of a proposed constitution along with food rations in Sulaimaniyah, one of three provinces in the Kurds' northern self-ruled region. The move is seen as a step in reviving a referendum on the constitution that Iraq's election commission prevented from occurring in July. Arabs see the draft constitution as an effort by Kurds to expand their region, escalating tension between the two groups that is seen as a major threat to Iraqi stability.
