By Xinhua
Mosul, Iraq : A suicide truck bomber struck a U.S. patrol in the city of Mosul, capital of Nineveh Province, on Wednesday, wounding five people, a provincial police source said.
“A suicide bomber rammed his booby-trapped KIA truck into a U.S. patrol in Mosul’s southern neighborhood of al-Malliyah, wounding five bystanders,” Brigadier Abdul Kareem al-Jubouri, head of Nineveh’s police operations office, told Xinhua.
It was unclear whether the U.S. patrol sustained any casualties as the troops immediately cordoned off the area, preventing the Iraqi police from approaching the scene, Jubouri said.
The U.S. military did not confirm the incident yet.
Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, has been the hotbed of insurgency and sectarian violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Earlier in the day, a suicide bomber blew up his explosive-laden car near the convoy of Talib Muhammad Murtadha, mayor of Sulaiman Bek town, in Salahudin Province, north of Baghdad, wounding the mayor and two of his bodyguards, a provincial police source said.
In northeast of Baghdad, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a crowded marketplace in the mainly Shiite town of Khan BaniSaad in the volatile province of Diyala, killing eight and wounding 10 others, a police source from the province said.
Recent spate of bombings ravaged the Iraqi cities, including the capital, raising fears of a return to violence after a period of a relative lull in the past months.