Truck bomb kills 20 in northern Iraq

HAMDANIYA, Iraq – The village grocer and his son were the first to spot the two big trucks struggling early Thursday to cross a narrow bridge into Wardek, their tiny farming community outside Mosul in northern Iraq.

They alerted the rest of the village, and men quickly gathered to open fire on the attackers. Villagers said they killed the driver of the first truck, preventing the bomb it carried from detonating. The second truck, however, veered toward the main square and crashed into a house, exploding in a powerful blast that killed at least 20 villagers and wounded 35, according to accounts from authorities and survivors.

The grocer and his son were among the dead, witnesses said.

The coordinated assault on this Kurdish enclave – which residents said had no police, military or militia protection – appears to be a deadly escalation of the ethnic strife that’s plaguing Mosul, a volatile city about 225 miles north of Baghdad.

Arabs and Kurds in the area have fought for months in a power struggle over land and control of political and security posts. U.S. and Iraqi authorities have warned that militants linked to al-Qaida in Iraq are exploiting the tensions, promising Arabs protection from the Kurds in exchange for support or complicity in terrorist attacks.

“Arab-Kurd tensions represent a vulnerability that al-Qaida in Iraq and others are attempting to exploit. They continue to attack weaknesses they find in the population,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen Lanza, spokesman for U.S. forces.

Many residents of Wardek blamed the central government and their own Kurdish forces for failing to protect them from the bombers Thursday.