Truck bomb in north Iraq Kurdish village kills 19

Suicide attacks continue in Iraq. Reuters

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into a Kurdish village in northern Iraq before dawn on Thursday, killing at least 19 villagers and wounding 13, police said.

Police said the initial death toll from the blast in the village of Wardek, about 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, was likely to rise. Women and children were among the dead and many houses were completely destroyed.

Another truck bomber tried to set off a second blast in the village but local Kurdish Peshmerga forces opened fire and killed him before he reached its outskirts, Iraqi police said.

Wardek is 30 km (18 miles) east of the volatile northern city of Mosul, where al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgent groups are making a last stand after being driven out of their former strongholds in Baghdad and western Iraq.

U.S. officials say insurgents are increasingly seeking ways to attack Kurds in ethnically mixed parts of northern Iraq in a bid to foment ethnic violence between Arabs and Kurds at a time of rising tensions over land disputes.

(Reporting by Jamal al-Badrani; Writing by Tim Cocks; editing by Michael Roddy)