Suicide attack on Iraqi funeral

Injured people were taken to hospital in Sulaimaniya

At least 25 people have been killed by a suicide bomber in the north-eastern Iraqi province of Diyala, police say.

The bomber targeted a crowd of mourners at a Kurdish funeral in the town of Jalawla, 115km (70 miles) north-east of the capital, Baghdad.

Dozens of people are reported to have been wounded in the explosion.

The attack came just hours after another bombing in the district of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, killed at least eight people.

The BBC's Hugh Sykes, in Baghdad, says al-Qaeda has launched dozens of attacks in Diyala, most of them since losing support in other parts of Iraq.

The likely target of the attack, our correspondent says, was a local politician named Hamid Hudada who was attending the funeral.

It is not yet clear whether the official, who belongs to a party allied to President Jalal Talabani, is among the dead.

Pattern of attacks

US officials said earlier this month that Iraq was experiencing its lowest levels of violence since 2003.

But since then there have been several major bombings.

The latest violence came just hours after a bomb had exploded near a car-repair shop in the Abu Ghraib district, west of Baghdad.

Another attack in Abu Ghraib on 10 March killed 33 people.

In the same week, more than 30 people died in an attack on a police recruitment centre and another 10 were killed in an explosion at a cattle market in Babel province.