KHAZNAH: Two truck bombs targetting a tiny sect in a village in northern Iraq and a spate of bloody bombings in Baghdad killed at least 42 people today and wounded nearly 250, police said.

In the deadliest single attack, two booby-trapped lorries exploded before dawn in the village of Khaznah, east of the restive northern Iraqi city of Mosul, leaving 28 people dead and 155 wounded. The massive blasts levelled 35 houses and gouged deep craters into the ground of the prosperous village of 3,000, home to members of the small Shabak community, a sect of Kurdish origin.

“A minute later another bomb went off, knocking me off the roof onto the ground. I was struck unconscious by shrapnel and stones,” he said.

In Baghdad, two bombs went off as day labourers were gathering in the early morning looking for jobs, police and the interior

ministry said. The first bomb, hidden inside a bag of cement, exploded at Hay al-Amel

in the west of the capital, killing seven people and injuring 46.

The second attack, a car bomb in Shurta Arbaa in the north of the city, killed nine people and wounded 36.