Bomb blasts hit Iraqi Kurdistan

Sulaymaniyah had been safer than other parts of Iraq

There have been several bomb explosions in the largely-Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah in north-eastern Iraq, officials say.

One bomb exploded outside a building housing the provincial security ministry in charge of the Kurdish militia groups, the peshmerga.

Twelve people were killed and several injured by the explosion.

Two others were wounded in an earlier attack on the convoy of a senior Kurdish politician.

Militants have increased their attacks in Iraq since the referendum on the draft constitution on 15 October.

Iraqi electoral officials announced on Tuesday that the charter had been approved.

Car bombs

Local sources told the BBC's Jim Muir that the explosion at the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs was caused by a suicide car bomber who rammed his vehicle into the ministry's compound.

The explosion killed six peshmerga and three civilians, a peshmerga official, Lt-Col Taha Rida, told the Associated Press.

Two Kurdish militiamen and two civilians were also wounded, he said.

Experts are also attempting to defuse a bomb that was discovered outside a hotel on the city's main street.

Earlier, two suicide car bombers attacked the convoy of a senior Kurdish politician on a highway west of Sulaymaniyah.

Mullah Bakhtiar, a senior official in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), survived the explosions, but two of his guards were injured.

The PUK, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, has traditionally controlled south-eastern Kurdistan, of which Sulaymaniyah is the main city.

The region has so far been safer than most other parts of the country.