By Xinhua,
Baghdad : At least five children were killed and two others injured on Monday when a bomb hidden in a street stall near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, local police said.
According to the police, the incident took place around 6:30 pm(1530 GMT) when the children were playing near their homes in the town of Hammam al-Ali, some 20 kilometres south of Mosul.
The children were aged between seven and nine years old. The two wounded were in critical condition and had been sent to Mosul for specialist treatment, according to a local doctor.
The explosion is the latest in a string of attacks in northern Iraq, where the Iraqi authorities and the U.S. military say al-Qaida has sought to regroup after being forced from strongholds elsewhere.
Violence has dramatically dropped in the Iraqi cities, hitting a four-year low, but the U.S. military warned recently that security remains fragile and the gain is reversible.