The al-Qaeda-led Islamic State in Iraq group claimed responsibility today for a suicide truck bombing that killed 50 people.
In a statement posted on a website, the group said yesterday's attack had targeted the headquarters of the National Guard and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the northern town of Makhmour.
"One of the lions of the Islamic State in Iraq penetrated the headquarters in the Makhmour area south of Mosul," the group said. Makhmour is just outside the autonomous Kurdish region.
The attack was the second in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq in four days.
The group has also said it was behind a truck bomb on Wednesday in the city of Arbil, capital of Kurdistan, in which 15 people were killed.
Elsewhere, thousands of US troops are searching for three US soldiers missing in Iraq after an ambush in which al-Qaeda said it seized "crusader" forces.
The Islamic State in Iraq said it was holding soldiers who survived an attack south of Baghdad in which the US military said four US troops and an Iraqi army translator were killed.
That attack and the suicide truck bombing came as President Bush deploys 30,000 more US troops due in Iraq in June in what is seen as a final push to halt a slide into all-out civil war between majority Shias and Sunni Arabs.