Iraq: The force of the explosions at the US base in Mosul yesterday knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats, said US reporter Jeremy Redmon, of the Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, who witnessed the blasts.
A fireball enveloped the top of the mess tent and shrapnel was sprayed all around. The explosions blew a huge hole in the tent.
Amid the screaming and dense smoke, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and carefully carried them outside.
Medics rushed into the mess tent and carried the rest of the wounded out on stretchers.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside. Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed, dazed by the blast.
"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
Near the front entrance to the mess tent, troops tended a soldier with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag. Three more bodies could be seen in the nearby car park.
The "Ansar al-Sunna Army" claimed responsibility for the Mosul attack in an Internet statement which described it as a "martyrdom operation" - language used to describe suicide attacks.
Ansar al-Sunna is believed to be a fundamentalist group whose goal is to turn Iraq into a tightly-controlled Islamic state similar to Afghanistan's former Taliban regime. In August, the same Sunni Muslim group claimed responsibility for the beheading of 12 Nepalese hostages.
Mosul, a largely Sunni Arab city, was initially peaceful after the US-led invasion of Iraq, but violence has intensified there in the aftermath of the all-out attack on the insurgent stronghold of Falluja by US and Iraqi troops in November.
On Sunday, insurgents in Mosul detonated two roadside bombs and a car-bomb aimed at a US patrol in three separate attacks during a two-hour period. Other car-bombs detonated on Sunday killed 67 people in the Shia holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.
Iraq's interim prime minister, Mr Iyad Allawi, warned on Monday that the insurgents were trying to foment sectarian civil war as well as derail elections scheduled for the end of January.
During a surprise visit to Iraq yesterday, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, held talks with Mr Allawi and Iraqi election officials, whom he described as "heroes" for the way they carried out their work in the face of attacks by insurgents.
"I said to them that I thought they were the heroes of the new Iraq that's being created, because here are people who are risking their lives every day to make sure that the people of Iraq get a chance to decide their own destiny," Mr Blair said during a joint news conference with Mr Allawi.