Blasts and bullets killed at least 21 people in Iraq on Wednesday, among them 12 who died when a powerful booby-trap flattened buildings in northern Mosul city, police and the US military said. More than 142 people were wounded in the violence, most of them residents of houses adjoining the booby-trapped building in western Mosul which were damaged in the explosion, officials said.
An Iraqi security official said the three-story empty building was being readied by the Iraqi army for use as a snipers' post to stop al Qaeda fighters using a nearby bridge to hang victims of their kidnappings - one of their favoured execution spots.
"A large house-borne bomb exploded" in Mosul, a US military statement said. "Our numbers (are) 132 wounded Iraqis and 12 Iraqis killed. Three Iraqi soldiers were also wounded," it said. The statement said the blast also knocked out several cell phone towers in Mosul.
Iraqi police Brigadier General Abdul al-Juburi earlier said the blast occurred when a munitions cache in the building exploded. "The Iraqi army received reports that a cache of weapons and munitions had been discovered in an empty building in west Mosul. The army arrived near the area and was waiting for the disposal experts to arrive when the explosion occurred," Juburi told AFP.
"The force of the blast caused the building to collapse. Fifteen houses next to it were damaged." US intelligence experts warn that Iraq's third-largest city remains a dangerous "strategic centre of gravity for al Qaeda". The jihadists, they say, can easily blend in with the local population, which is ethnically diverse.
Also in northern Iraq, a car bomb in a market place in Al-Dibis town, about 50 kilometres (31 miles) northeast of the oil hub of Kirkuk, killed six people, among them a woman and a child, police and a hospital official said.
Police Captain Mahmud Khudhair Abdullah said the bomb went off in the middle of a market. Al-Dibis is an ethnically mixed town comprising Arabs, Turkmen and Kurds. It lies in a mainly agricultural area that also boasts an oil field and a hydrolectric power station. Doctor Abdullah Jasim of the emergency unit in Kirkuk hospital put the toll at six killed and 16 wounded.
In Baghdad, gunmen in a car sprayed an Iraqi army foot patrol with gunfire, killing three soldiers and wounding two, security and hospital officials said. The attack took place in Mohammed Al-Qassim Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in the commercial district of Bab al-Mudham, a security official said.
The assailants sped off after the shooting, the official said. North of the capital, seven fuel tankers and their drivers were waylaid on a highway near Samarra by armed gunmen travelling in three cars, a security official said.