BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A fuel tanker rigged with explosives killed 40 people when it blew up near a Sunni mosque in western Iraq on Saturday, a day after the mosque’s imam had criticized al Qaeda militants, police and residents said. The bomb exploded in a market in the town of Habaniya in the restive province of Anbar, where U.S. forces are battling Sunni Arab insurgent groups, including al Qaeda.
Local police said they believed the mosque was the target, adding that the market had been destroyed and 64 people wounded. Women and children were among the dead, they said. In Baghdad, more than 20 loud explosions in quick succession rocked a southern district of the capital after night fell. The U.S. military said the cause of the blasts were “indirect fire.” Brigadier Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi forces in the capital, said the blasts were the result of military operations by Iraqi and U.S. forces conducting a major security crackdown in Baghdad. Residents said the imam of the mosque in Habaniya had criticized Sunni al Qaeda during Friday prayers. Some Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar are leading a campaign to fight al Qaeda, which is deeply entrenched in the province. But the attack signals an escalation of the power struggle in an area where U.S. troop reinforcements are soon to be deployed........
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