A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives in an outdoor market Saturday, killing at least 23 people and wounding at least 86 others in a village of Shiite ethnic Turkomen north of Baghdad, police said. Hours earlier, a suicide car bomber struck outside a cafe Friday night in a tiny Shiite Kurdish near the Iranian border northeast of the capital, killing 26 people and wounding at least 33, police said. The two attacks suggest that Sunni militants are regrouping to launch their deadliest form of attack - car bombings, often against Shiites - in regions further away from Baghdad, beyond the edges of a three-week old U.S. offensive on the capital`s northern flank. The offensive around the city of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, is part of a stepped-up U.S. crackdown seeking to bring calm to the capital. It aims to uproot al-Qaida fighters and other Sunni insurgents who use the Baqouba region - and another on Baghdad`s southeastern edges - as a staging ground for attacks in the capital. Saturday`s blast, at around 8:30 am, destroyed several mud homes in the village of Armili, and victims had to be transported in farmers` pickup trucks to the nearest health facility, in Tuz Khormato, 27 miles to the north, said Capt. Soran Ali of the Tuz Khormato police. Saleh Ali, a medic at Tuz Khurmato hospital, said 23 dead and 86 wounded were brought to the facility. Residents of the village said more victims remained trapped under destroyed houses and shops. "Some are still under the rubble with no one to help them. There are no ambulances to evacuate the victims," said Haitham Hadad, who evacuated his wounded cousin in his car to Tuz Khurmato hospital. The village, 100 miles north of Baghdad is mainly made up of Shiite Turkomen, an ethnic minority that is spread across north-central Iraq, though most of its members are Sunni Muslim. In the Friday evening attack, a suicide bomber detonated a boobytrapped car outside a cafe near a market stocking Iranian goods in the village of Ahmad Marif, killing 26 and wounding 33, said an official at the joint security coordination committee of Diyala province, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The village is home to about 30 Kurdish families who had been expelled under Saddam Hussein`s rule and returned after his fall. Many Kurds in the area are Shiite Muslims. American commanders acknowledge many insurgent leaders fled Baqouba, the capital of Diyala, just ahead of the U.S. assault there. The new back-to-back bombings could mean the militants have moved a step away from the capital, but still are able to unleash attacks. Ahmad Marif, lies on the remote outskirts of Diyala, while Armili is located north of Baqouba in a neighboring province near the border with Diyala. The U.S. security crackdown in Baghdad and to its north and south have sparked an increase in American casualties. The U.S. military on Saturday announced the deaths of seven more American service members in Iraq, most of them in combat operations. Two soldiers died Friday when a roadside bomb exploded near their patrol in east Baghdad, the military said. A U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter were killed Friday when an explosively formed penetrator exploded near their patrol in southeastern Baghdad, the military said. Explosively formed penetrators are high-tech bombs that the U.S. believes are provided by Iran, a charge denied by Tehran. Another soldier died Friday of a non-battle-related cause and his death is under investigation, the military said without giving further details. Three other service members were killed in fighting Thursday - two Marines in western Anbar province and a soldier in Baghdad, the command said. The deaths bring to 3,599 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. Meanwhile, British troops were hit by heavy attacks with bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire in the southern city of Basra, the British military said Saturday. The troops came under "a large number of attacks" while conducting operations overnight that arrested several people in Basra, the military statement said. Coalition warplanes destroyed roadside bombs from the air as the troops were extracted from the city, it said. The statement said one soldier was killed and that one of the three injured was seriously wounded. Britain has withdrawn hundreds of troops from Iraq, leaving a force of around 5,500 based mainly on the fringes of Basra, Iraq`s second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. Their bases frequently come under mortar fire from Shiite militants in the city. The U.S. currently has about 155,000 troops in Iraq.