15 killed in building explosion north of Baghdad

Baghdad: At least 15 people have been killed and scores wounded when a building used by militants to store weapons and tons of explosives exploded into flames on Wednesday in Mosul, a city just north of the Iraqi capital

Senior Iraqi officials reported that women and children were among the victims of the blast.

"There are still people trapped inside the blast site and under rubble," Major-General Mark Hertling, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, told a Reuters correspondent.

Hertling said that explosive experts at the scene estimated 15 tons of ordnance had been hidden in the building.

Witnesses said it was one of the biggest explosions ever heard in ethnically and religiously mixed Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.

Hertling said 12 civilians and three Iraqi soldiers had been killed and that U.S. military medics had been sent to Mosul to help treat the wounded.

Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province, one of Iraq's northern regions where U.S. and Iraqi forces this year have launched offensives against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda fighters.

In another attack in northern Iraq, a suicide car bomb has killed seven people and left 16 others wounded about 40 km (25 miles) from the city of Kirkuk, reported Iraqi police.