Suicide bomber kills 9 in Iraq's Mosul

MOSUL, Iraq, Aug 15 (Reuters) A suicide bomber today detonated a truck rigged with explosives outside the offices of a top Kurdish political party in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, killing nine people and wounding 36, police said.

Five Kurdish peshmerga militiamen were among the dead, police said. The blast outside the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, also wounded 24 militiamen. The rest of the victims were civilians.

Mosul, a religiously divided city 390 km north of Baghdad, has suffered from considerable sectarian bloodshed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and it witnessed heavy clashes between militants and US and Iraqi forces on August 4.

Police Colonel Kareem Khalaf said the bomber detonated a dump truck at 1235 hrs IST in an eastern section of the city. Another police source said the truck may have been mistaken for a construction vehicle connected with work being done on the building.

The attack follows violence against the PUK last week, when its offices in southern Iraq were ransacked by followers of a Basra-based Shi'ite cleric.

They were angered by an article in the Kurdish party's official newspaper claiming the cleric, Sheikh al-Yaqoubi, was fanning sectarian tension in Kirkuk, a religiously mixed city claimed both by Arabs and Kurds.

Talabani subsequently issued a statement saying he regretted any hurt caused by the report and had had no prior knowledge of its publication.

REUTERS KD KN1700