Death toll from Iraq bombings likely to be worst of war

[ck4829]

Officials said Wednesday that as many as 500 people probably died in a series of coordinated truck bombings that devastated two northern Iraqi villages Tuesday and set a record for mass carnage in war-torn Iraq.

Residents and rescue workers in Tal al Azizziyah and Sheikh Khadar, two villages near the Syrian border in Nineveh province, spent Wednesday pulling the dead and wounded from the rubble of clay homes that had collapsed when the massive bombs exploded.

The confirmed death toll was at least 250 and climbing, officials said. Five hundred more were wounded, many critically. More than 100 one-story homes and shops were destroyed by the blasts.

Rescue workers set up tents on a highway between the cities of Dohuk and Mosul to house the wounded after health ministry officials said area hospitals were full. The area of devastation in one of the villages measured a half-mile in diameter.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20070815bcusiraq_attn_national_foreign_editors_ytop