Toll in N. Iraq Passes 250; Attack Is Deadliest of War

"Someone in every family is dead," said Sulman Salim, Khalil's brother-in-law. "They destroyed us."

As soldiers and volunteers searched frantically for survivors in the Yazidi villages Wednesday, two car bombs exploded two minutes apart in another area of northern Iraq, killing at least five people, police said.

The bombs struck an outdoor market in a Kurdish neighborhood of Kirkuk, about 150 miles to the southeast. Thirty people were injured, according to Kirkuk's deputy police chief, Brig. Gen. Sarhad Qadir.

As in the region where the Yazidis live, ethnic and religious tensions in Kirkuk have resulted in increasing violence in the past few months.

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein sought to establish the oil-rich city as a haven for Sunni Arabs, but since his removal, the government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region has sought to bring Kirkuk under its control. The move is opposed by many Arabs, as well as by neighboring Turkey, whose government says it represents the interests of Iraq's Turkmen residents.

The attacks Tuesday and Wednesday appear to be part of a larger pattern of increasing violence in regions with relatively little military protection. The U.S. military has cited major successes, such as increased cooperation with tribal sheiks in Anbar province and a drop in the number of sectarian killings in Baghdad, following the addition of 30,000 troops this year. But the number of civilian deaths from mass-casualty bombings was nearly three times higher in July than in June, mostly as a result of incidents in the north.

Last month, more than 80 people were killed by a car bomb in Kirkuk, and at least 140 were killed in Amerli, a mainly Shiite village 50 miles to the south.

Brwari reported from Dahuk. Special correspondents Naseer Nouri, Saad al-Izzi and Dalya Hassan in Baghdad contributed to this report.