Baghdad: A surge of violence killed 28 people in the past 24 hours in Iraq, among them 12 members of the Kurdish peshmerga forces who died in a bomb blast near the Syrian border, officials have said.

The country's north bore the brunt of the violence, with the attack on the peshmerga troops at the town of Rabiyah, three car bombs exploding yesterday in separate incidents in the main city of Mosul, and a suicide bomb attack on a funeral in the town of Tal Afar.

Local police said the car bomb parked on the side of the road near Rabiyah, 120 kilometers northwest of Iraq's main northern city of Mosul, exploded yesterday as a vehicle carrying peshmerga troops drove by, killing 12 and wounding five.

The Kurdish security forces form part of the Iraqi army.

At Tal Afar, 80 kilometres west of Mosul, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of people attending a funeral, killing four people and wounding 35,police said.

The attack was "against a wake being held in memory of an Iraqi soldier killed two days ago," the US military said in a statement on the incident.

Police in Mosul, meanwhile, said insurgents exploded three car bombs separately in the city centre, including one against a passing patrol of US and Iraqi troops which killed one person and wounded six.

In another incident, two policemen and eight civilians were wounded when a parked car bomb exploded after police found it parked on a roadside in Al-Ugaidat neighbourhood, a local police officer said.

A third car bomb exploded in Mosul s Mahatta neighbourhood but caused no injuries, he said.

Source : PTI