At least 18 people died in violence in northern Iraq on Friday, police said, including a senior policeman in the country's third largest city Mosul. A suicide bomber killed 10 people when he drove his car packed with explosives on to a sports field in Hadhar, 90 km (55 miles) to the south of Mosul, where a police team were playing a local side. Police said the car ploughed into a group of police spectators, killing three policemen and seven civilians. Twelve people were wounded. In Mosul, police Colonel Jassim Muhammad Bilal and two bodyguards were killed by a car bomb in the ethnically diverse city, which is 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. At least one more policeman and four militants were killed in Mosul during six hours of heavy clashes between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi security forces, police sources was quoted as saying by Reuters.
