ERMELI, Iraq: Funeral of 140 martyrs that were martyred in a truck bomb attack in the Iraqi village of Ermeli was held while the darkness of grief gripped the village as black mourning banners, armbands, bloodstains and soot bore grim testament to the bloody aggression.

Policemen guarding the entrance to the town wore black armbands and stony expressions, determined to face down the extremists behind the attack in which a truck packed with four tonnes of explosives detonated in a crowded market.

Talking to an AFP reporter, policeman Imad Abdul Hussein said: "I lost my uncle and his son in the explosion."

He added that the village was without running water after the suicide bombing destroyed pipes and brought down electricity cables.

"I am at work today to retaliate against the criminals, and to send them a message that we are alive and we are on our homeland and we will fight Al-Qaeda until the last drop of our blood," he said.

"We will either kill them or they will annihilate us," Hussein added.

The mayor of nearby Tuz Khurmatu said Al-Qaeda had struck because Ermeli had been a peaceful village of Sunnis and Shiites from Iraq's Turkmen minority surrounded by smaller hamlets of Sunni Arabs.

Police chief Lieutenant Colonel Khalaf al-Bayati rattled off a litany of destruction. "Almost every household in Emerli has lost a loved one," he said.

"We have registered a total number of 140 killed but there are also 20 missing and 270 injured," he added.