Mosul - Suicide bombers targeted police in northern Iraq on Thursday, killing 20 people in two attacks, just as the United States military announced the withdrawal of several thousand troops citing a drop in violence.
In the bloodiest strike, a bomber in an explosives-packed jacket blew himself up at a recruitment centre in the town of Sinjar, on the road to Syria from the main northern city of Mosul.
Seventeen people were killed and 30 wounded, hospital sources said.
Interior ministry spokesperson Major General Abdul Kareem Khalaf told reporters that the bomber targeted a centre that recruited personnel for the police and security services in the area.
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The mountains around Sinjar are a major centre of Iraq's non-Muslim Yazidi Kurdish community and saw the single deadliest attack since the US-led invasion of 2003.
On August 14 last year, four suicide bombers blew up lorries in two Yazidi villages near Sinjar, killing more than 400 people.
Only hours before Thursday's attack in Sinjar, a suicide bomber drove into a group of police officers and detonated his explosives in Al-Gabat, a village north of Mosul, police Captain Aziz Imara told reporters.
Three people, including two policemen, were killed and 12 people wounded, he said, adding that the blast had also damaged nearby shops and restaurants.
Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, is regarded by the American military as the last urban bastion of al-Qaeda in the country and Iraqi and US forces have been conducting a major crackdown against jihadists in the area since May 14.
The US military earlier announced the withdrawal next month of another 4 000 "surge" troops from Iraq after reporting that violence across the country had hit a four-year low.
It is the fourth brigade to withdraw from Iraq out of five that deployed under the controversial surge in US troop numbers in February 2007 which saw an extra 30 000 soldiers poured in to curb sectarian violence.
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