Baghdad, May 24 (DPA) Eight people were killed when a suicide bomber exploded a car packed with explosives at a US patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul Sunday.
The explosion, which took place in the Mosul neighbourhood of al Duwasa, also killed the bomber and wounded 26 people, police said.

Police in Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, did not provide any further details, and the US military did not immediately make any public statement about the attack or whether any US soldiers had been hurt.

Earlier Sunday, in Hilla, about 100 km south of Baghdad, a gunman shot a militiaman from a Sunni “Sahwa”, or “Awakening”, militia aligned with the government at a checkpoint he was manning, police there said.

Iraqi officials have been at pains to say that the recent spate of attacks should not obscure the overall improvement in Iraq’s security from three years ago, when some 13,000 people were killed in sectarian attacks.

“Iraq is now 90-percent secure,” Iraqi National Security Minister Sherwan al-Waeli told DPA Sunday.

The minister’s comments came after a spate of bombings in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk left 74 people dead over the course of Wednesday night and Thursday.

April was the bloodiest month this year in Iraq. More than 300 people, mostly Shia Muslims in the capital, were killed in a series of deadly bomb blasts over the course of the month.