Suicide bombers killed more than 70 people when they targeted two mosques in eastern Iraq during Friday prayers today shortly after a double car-bomb attack on a hotel used by Westerners in Baghdad.

Eight people - all of them Iraqis - died in the attack on the al-Hamra Hotel. In the building at the time was Catherine Philp, a Times correspondent, who described it as "little short of a miracle" that the bombers had not managed to get through security barricades.

Dozens of worshippers were killed when two men walked into the Sheikh Murad and Khanaqin Grand mosques in the town of Khanaqin, on the eastern border with Iran, and detonated explosive belts. The mosques, both packed with worshippers on the Muslim holy day, were destroyed.

The director of the local hospital said 74 people had been killed. Ibrahim Ahmed Bajalan, a member of the Diyala provincial council, said: "I think there are more than 100 people dead."

Speaking from his bed in hospital, Omar Saleh, 73, described how he was bowing in prayer when the bomb exploded. "The roof fell on us and the place was filled with dead bodies," he said. As the sun set in Khanaqin, local men were still sifting through the rubble in a desperate search for survivors.

In Baghdad, the blasts in the Jadriyah district of the capital were a few hundred yards from a government building at the centre of a new torture scandal, although this is not believed to have been the target.

The first explosion - captured on surveillance video - knocked down part of the barricade protecting the rear of the hotel at about 8.20am (0520GMT). A second, bigger explosion followed a minute later as a truck attempted to drive through the gap but was blocked by the crater and rubble from the previous blast.

The explosions echoed through the city centre, sending a mushroom cloud hundreds of feet into the air.

Philp said: "There's no doubt that they were trying to drive the second vehicle straight at the hotel. It wasn't able to get through because it was blocked by the crater caused by the first bomb. It was about 150 metres away when it exploded. The bomber's foot landed in the lobby.

"It is little short of a miracle that they did not get any nearer. If they had succeeded in driving the truck against the side of the building, they would have wiped out half of the Baghdad press corps."

Several residential buildings near to the Hamra collapsed from the twin blasts, which gouged a large crater in the road outside. Water from a burst main flooded the street.

Firefighters joined neighbours to dig through the debris and under toppled blast barriers to pull victims from the rubble.

The deputy interior minister, Major General Hussein Kamal said the heavily fortified hotel appeared to be the target, with the first bomb designed to breach blast walls and the second to cause devastation.

This is the second attack against a hotel housing international journalists after the October 24 triple-vehicle bomb attack against the Palestine Hotel, where a number of international networks are based.

US Army engineering units were sent to the scene to help in the rescue effort, a statement from the US 3rd Infantry Division said. At least one family was believed buried in the rubble. Another family was rescued by firefighters after part of their house collapsed, police Major Raed Abbas-Salman said. The mother had serious burns because she was in the kitchen, while the father and three children suffered shrapnel wounds.

Major General Ali Ghalib, a deputy Interior Minister, said the ministry building where 173 detainees were found last weekend is very close to the Hamra Hotel but "we believe that the hotel was the target".

The American military believes the level of violence in Iraq will increase in the run-up to the December 15 general election, at a time when military analysts suggest some 3,000 foreigners are now fighting alongside home-grown insurgents.

"This level of chaos and violence is going to increase, almost in spite of what we do, between now and the election," according to a senior US commander in Iraq, interviewed before the latest attacks.

In Khanaqin, a largely Kurdish town some 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, local men were still sifting through the rubble of the two mosques at sunset. A 12-year-old girl collected copies of the Koran, kissed them, and put them away.

Omar Saleh, 73, said from his bed at Kalar hospital that he was bowing in prayer when the bomb exploded. "The roof fell on us and the place was filled with dead bodies," he said

- Catherine Philp will be describing the al-Hamra bomb attack in tomorrow's Times.

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