Two suicide car bombs exploded outside a joint US-Iraqi military base near the northern town of Sinjar today, killing five people and wounding at least 45, a hospital official said.
Witnesses told the official the bombs exploded in quick succession at the entrance to the base, just south of Sinjar, in the northwest of Iraq, close to the border with Syria. Most of those wounded were labourers at the camp or Iraqi troops, they said.
The blasts followed a car bomb attack on an Iraqi police convoy in Tikrit late yesterday which killed two civilians and wounded 24 people, including nine police, Jalal Khoshi, a doctor at the local hospital said.
He said an ambulance driver carrying the wounded to hospital had also been shot and killed, but it was not immediately clear by whom.