Fighters have blown up two trucks in the Iraqi town of Talafar, killing 48 people and injuring 100, police say.

One bomb was hidden in a truck that arrived at a market loaded with food supplies, and was detonated by the driver, a police spokesman said.

It was one of the largest attacks in Talafar since US President George Bush used the town to illustrate progress in Iraq, just over a year ago.

It came as the US said two major car bombers had been arrested in Iraq.

The US military said the pair were caught during operations in Adhamiya, a mainly Sunni Arab area in northern Baghdad, last week.

It said they were the suspected leaders of a network suspected of killing some 900 civilians in a series of recent car bomb attacks.

The Talafar attack occurred when a truck arrived at the town's market, which has been suffering food shortages.

The driver was waved through and waited while hungry residents gathered round his truck, then exploded his bomb and obliterated them, a police spokesman said.

A second vehicle bomb caused further damage.

In a speech on 20 March last year, marking the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Mr Bush spoke at length about the city of Talafar, which he said had been effectively liberated from al-Qaeda control.

It followed a joint Iraqi-US operation to root out insurgents during 2005, after which the town was surrounded with sandbanks to try to control entry and exit.

But the town, in the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh, near the Syrian border, has still been subject to attacks.

At least eight people were killed when a man blew himself up outside a pastry shop Talafar's market on Saturday.

'Nuns' killed

Separately, at least 10 people were killed on Tuesday in a car bomb attack outside the western city of Ramadi.

In other violence, two elderly women were killed when intruders broke into their home in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

They told the Associated Press news agency the women were sisters and both nuns at Kirkuk's Cathedral of the Virgin.

In southern Baghdad, a mortar attack on the Shia enclave of Abu Chir left four dead, including two children, and 14 other people wounded.

In the town of Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, four people died when gunmen opened fire on a Sunni funeral cortege, Iraqi army officials told Agence France-Presse news agency.

Photo caption

US troops in Iraq