A suicide bomber in a car killed at least five policemen and wounded 12 people, including civilians, on Monday in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, police and medics said. It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack but suicide bombings are the hallmark of al Qaeda's local wing, the Islamic State of Iraq, which aims to take back ground lost to the Iraqi security forces.
The bomber drove a vehicle packed with explosives up to a federal police headquarters in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, and detonated it. In separate incidents, two soldiers and three policemen were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded in eastern Mosul.