Suicide attack on Iraqi army kills 16

MOSUL - Up to 16 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on Iraqi soldiers near Mosul on Sunday, a United States military spokesman in the northern city said, giving what he said were preliminary accounts.

Details were sketchy but Sergeant John Franzen said a further seven people were wounded, according to the reports he had from the Iraqi military base at Kasak, between Mosul and the violent city of Tal Afar to the west.

Iraqi military officials said it appeared that a bomber wearing an explosive vest had detonated himself and that this was followed by a blast from a car.

Al Qaeda's Iraq wing, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, issued a claim of responsibility for the attack before news of it broke. It said two suicide bombers wearing explosives belts walked into an army recruiting centre at Kasak, causing many deaths.

A hospital in Mosul said it had received five dead and 13 wounded, mostly Iraqi civilian labourers, from the base.

Earlier in the day, al Qaeda claimed a suicide car bomb attack on a district police headquarters in Mosul that wrecked the building and killed at least six, mostly policemen.

Tal Afar has been a focus of US assaults on insurgents for some weeks as the Americans try to destroy rebel bases used, they believe, partly to help bring in foreign fighters across the nearby Syrian border.

- REUTERS