Blasts hit Baghdad's Green Zone

Baghdad : A wave of attacks across Iraq on Sunday killed 51 people, while insurgents fired a barrage of mortars at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, sending US embassy staff scurrying into bunkers.

The deadliest attack was in the main northern city of Mosul where a suicide bomber crashed an explosives-laden truck into an Iraqi army base, triggering a blast that killed 10 soldiers and wounded 30 other people, mostly soldiers, army officer Major Mohammad Ahmad told reporters.

"The bomber smashed the truck through barriers at the entrance to the base and triggered the explosion" around 7am, said Ahmad.

Iraqi and US troops are engaged in a major offensive against Al Qaida in Mosul, which according to US commanders is the jihadists' last urban stronghold in Iraq.

In south of Baghdad, armed men travelling in three cars opened fire on crowds in a local market in the mixed Zafaraniyah neighbourhood, killing seven people and wounding 16, security and medical officials said.

In another attack in the Iraqi capital, a Katyusha rocket struck a residential building in largely Shiite eastern Al Kamaliyah neighbourhood, killing at least five people and wounding eight, security officials said.

A car bomb near a bus stop in Baghdad's Shiite Al Shuala neighbourhood killed five people and wounded eight others, security officials said.

Further north, a roadside bomb near the town of Al Tuz, 75km south of Kirkuk, killed four Iraqi army personnel, a medic said.

The US military said its troops raided a "suicide bombing network" in Diyala, killing 12 men.

Spokesman Major Winfield Danielson told reporters the raid was launched east of Baquba. When ground forces closed in on the "target building", they came under small arms fire, Danielson said, adding that the troops fired back. Assault weapons, ammunition and grenades were discovered on the site and destroyed.

Elsewhere, four people, including a police officer, were killed in shootings, police said.