Suicide bomber kills 15 in north Iraq

MOSUL: A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle rigged with explosives in a village in northern Iraq on Thursday, killing 15 people, police and a doctor said.

The blast tore through a residential area of Al-Muwaffaqiyah, a village east of Mosul that is mainly populated by members of the small Shabak minority.

The 30,000-strong Shabak community mostly live near Iraq's border with Turkey.

Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when the country was just emerging from a brutal sectarian conflict.

The surge in violence, which has included sectarian attacks, has raised fears of a relapse into the intense sectarian bloodshed that killed tens of thousands of people in 2006-2007. (AFP)