BAGHDAD -- A triple bombing, including a massive suicide truck blast, killed more than 80 people Monday in Kirkuk, the deadliest attack yet in the oil-rich northern city. The bloodshed reinforced concern that extremists are heading north as U.S.-led forces step up pressure around Baghdad.

The vast majority of the casualties came in the truck bombing, which blasted a 30-foot-deep crater and damaged part of the roof of the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party of President Jalal Talabani. The explosion took place in a crowded commercial area and appeared aimed at causing as many civilian deaths as possible.

Saman Ahmed, 35, said he was driving along the street when the blast "pushed other vehicles toward my car along with fire and shrapnel like a flood."

"The glass from my car and the other cars went into my face," he said from his hospital bed. "Now I cannot hear well because of the sound of the explosion. I saw tens of dead bodies lying on the ground."

Kirkuk, 180 miles north of Baghdad, is a center of tensions among Arabs, Turkomen and Kurds, who want to include the area in the autonomous Kurdish region of the north. Voters in the city are to decide whether to join the Kurdish self-ruled region in a referendum by year's end.

With three ethnic groups competing for control, violence in Kirkuk has been frequent. But Monday's blasts were on a far bigger scale than most attacks.

-- The Associated Press