Reporting from Baghdad — A double suicide-bomb attack killed at least 34 people and wounded 70 others in northern Iraq this morning, according to police.
The bombers targeted Tall Afar, a predominantly Shiite Turkmen city in Nineveh province, where Arabs, Kurds and other religious groups are engaged in a dispute over the Iraqi state's internal boundaries.
The first attacker blew himself up near a police officer outside the victim's home, and as people gathered, the second bomber set off his explosives as well, police said.
The latest attack followed two similar bombings last month in neighboring Kirkuk province that killed more than 100 people, including 33 on June 30, the official date for U.S. forces to withdraw from cities. Two car bombs also exploded late Wednesday in an area of Nineveh under Kurdish control. At least 16 were killed in those attacks, police said.
With the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the cities, militants appear to have focused their efforts on the north, where the country's Arabs and Kurds are locked in dispute over a 300-mile stretch of land, where Saddam Hussein's regime expelled Kurds and settled Arabs in their place. Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdiish region wants to annex those areas, but Arabs have resisted.
The quarrel is complicated by the lucrative oil reserves that exist in Kirkuk province, which all sides want. The combustible mix has raised concern that the tensions, if left to fester, could flare into a Kurdish-Arab war.
In other violence, a pair of roadside bombs killed at least five people in the Shiite district of Sadr City, police said. The sprawling Shiite slum has been rocked by bombings several times since April, raising concerns about security in the capital as U.S. forces leave the city.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has warned that various armed groups would try to discredit the Iraqi security forces and cause instability with the departure of most American troops from the streets.
A Times correspondent in Mosul contributed to this report
