Updated: 2007-08-15 20:20

A curfew was in place Wednesday across towns west of Mosul, and US and Iraqi forces were conducting house-to-house searches in response to the bombings, according to Iraqi police and Army officers who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. Twenty suspects were arrested, they said.

Meanwhile, the US military heralded success in Day Two of a nationwide offensive against Sunni insurgents with links to al-Qaida and Shiite militiamen. Ten thousand US troops and 6,000 Iraqi soldiers were involved in air and ground assaults across Diyala and Salahuddin provinces, both north of Baghdad.

More than 300 artillery rounds, rockets and bombs were dropped in the Diyala River valley late Monday and early Tuesday, the US military said in a statement. Three suspected al-Qaida gunmen were killed and eight were taken prisoner, the military said. American troops also discovered several roadside bombs rigged to explode, as well as a booby-trapped house, it said.

In the Iraqi capital, US special forces and Iraqi soldiers detained three suspected al-Qaida in Iraq leaders and four Shiite militia suspects in separate raids Tuesday, the military said. Another Shiite extremist accused of attacking US forces was captured the same day in Najaf, a Shiite holy city 100 miles south of Baghdad, it said in a statement.

Thousands of followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took to the streets in Najaf in a peaceful protest against the detention. Demonstrators shouted anti-American slogans and called for an end to what they called random raids and rights violations targeting the movement.

The US military issued another statement Wednesday putting the death toll in the Yazidi bombings at 60. But the Iraqi estimate was based on body counts from local hospitals and morgues to which US officials had no access so the total was believed to be higher.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a statement Wednesday blaming the bombings on "terrorism powers who seek to fuel sectarian strife and damage our people's national unity."

"These crimes will not prevent us from standing up to challenges and moving ahead with the political process to impose law and bring criminals and outlaws to justice," the statement said.

At least one of the trucks in Tuesday's bombings was an explosives-laden fuel tanker, police said. Shops were set ablaze and apartment buildings were reported crumbled by the powerful explosions.

"My friend and I were thrown high in the air. I still don't know what happened to him," said Khadir Shamu, a 30-year-old Yazidi who was injured in Tal Azir, the scene of two blasts.

Witnesses said US helicopters swooped in to evacuate wounded to hospitals in Dahuk, a Kurdish city near the Turkish border about 60 miles north of Qahataniya. Civilian cars and ambulances also rushed injured to hospitals in Dahuk, police said.

"I gave blood. I saw many maimed people with no legs or hands," said Ghassan Salim, a 40-year-old Yazidi teacher who went to a hospital to donate blood. "Many of the wounded were left in the hospital garage or in the streets because the hospital is small."

In other violence Wednesday, a suicide car bomber killed two people and wounded seven south of Baghdad, according to Iraqi police. And a parked car bomb targeted a police patrol in southern Mosul, killing a civilian and injuring ten others, police and army officers said.

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