Dozens Die In 2 Truck Bombings In the North

Boys study car hit in military raid on home of a Moqtada al-Sadr aide in Kufa. (By Alaa Al-marjani -- Associated Press)

BAGHDAD, March 27 -- Twin truck bombings killed dozens of people in the northern Iraqi city of Tall Afar, in the deadliest of several attacks across the country on Tuesday, officials said.

At least 63 people were killed in Tall Afar, news services reported. The first blast in the Shiite-dominated city ripped through a parking lot after a bomber lured people to his truck by shouting that he had wheat for sale, said the mayor, Brig. Najim Abdullah. The second bomb exploded in a busy shopping district, crumbling nearby buildings.

Insurgents tried to block ambulances carrying victims to hospitals but fled when police opened fire, news services reported.

In Baghdad, a rocket attack on the heavily fortified Green Zone killed an American soldier and a U.S. government contractor, military and U.S. Embassy officials said. The blast also wounded one American soldier and at least four civilians, they said. The names of the victims were not released. Separately, a Marine was killed during combat in Iraq's western Anbar province.

West of Baghdad, an insurgent leader whose tribe has criticized the rival Sunni group al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed in a car bombing, police said. Harith Thahir al-Dari, a commander of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, was entering his home in Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, when two nearby car bombs exploded, killing him and three family members, police said.

In an interview, Dari's father, Thahir Khamees al-Dari, blamed the bombings on al-Qaeda in Iraq. The elder Dari, who is sheik of the large al-Zobaee tribe in Abu Ghraib, vowed to retaliate against the attackers.

Several Sunni tribes have recently allied with U.S. forces to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq. At the same time, U.S. and Iraqi officials have been trying to entice some Sunni fighters to break away from the group, outgoing U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said at a news conference Monday before departing Baghdad.

The al-Zobaee tribe has not aligned itself with the Americans, Dari said, nor has the 1920 Revolution Brigades, which has asserted responsibility for attacks on U.S. forces. But both groups are enemies of al-Qaeda in Iraq, he said.

Also on Tuesday, a car bomb detonated near a restaurant northwest of Ramadi, in Anbar province, killing at least 10 people and injuring 25, a police spokesman said.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, two elderly Chaldean Catholic nuns were killed early Tuesday by armed men who stormed into their house as they slept, then stabbed and shot them, said Brig. Gen. Yagdar Abdullah of the Kirkuk police.

Also on Tuesday, the U.S. military said soldiers at an Anbar province military post foiled an attack Monday involving two suicide truck bombs and more than two dozen insurgents.

The attack began about 2 p.m. when an explosives-rigged water truck barreled toward the compound in Karmah, near Fallujah, prompting a soldier to fire on the vehicle, setting it ablaze, the military said in a statement. About 30 armed men with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and other weapons then began trading fire with soldiers. Minutes later, soldiers fired on and detonated a second truck that was approaching the post, the military said.

Eight U.S. soldiers were wounded, and 15 insurgents were killed, the military said.

In Baghdad, a commission charged with carrying out the "de-Baathification" policy denounced a draft law allowing many former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath Party -- who were stripped of government jobs after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- to return to work or collect pensions, news services reported. The measure, approved Monday by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, was backed by the United States as a way to mollify Sunnis, the minority sect that ruled under Hussein. Parliament could vote on the proposed law this week.

"This draft turns a blind eye to the feelings of millions of the victims of [the] Baath Party and pays no heed to their emotions and rights," the statement said. "This will not lead to reconciliation."

Special correspondent Waleed Saffar in Baghdad and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.