The blast, hours after a smaller suicide bombing

in another Shi’ite village killed more than 20—suggested Sunni militants are

regrouping to launch attacks in regions further away

from Baghdad where security is thinner, beyond the edges of a three-week old US offensive on the capital’s northern flank.

Saturday’s blast ripped through the market in Armili, as crowds had gathered for morning shopping. The explosion destroyed old mud-brick houses and set cars on fire. Victims had to be transported in farmers’ pickup trucks to the nearest health facility, in Tuz Khormato, 45 kms to the north.

Deputy governor of Salahuddin province Abdullah Jabara said 115 people had been killed—70 per cent of them women, children and the elderly. He blamed the al-Qaeda for the attack.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed minibus by an Iraqi army patrol in the eastern Zayouna district Saturday, killing five soldiers and a civilian, police said.

Armili residents said tensions were constantly high with Sunni Arabs who dominate the villages of the surrounding countryside. Iraqi security presence is scant in the region, at a remote corner of Salahuddin.

The US military on Saturday also reported that eight American servicemembers were killed in fighting in Baghdad and western Anbar province over two days. A British soldier was killed in fighting with Shiite militias overnight in the southern city of Basra.

On Friday night, a suicide bomber detonated a boobytrapped car near a funeral being held in the Shiite Kurdish village of Zargosh, in the Sadiya region of Diyala province about 125 kms north-east of Baghdad.