Bombs, shooting kill at least 15 across Iraq: police

At least 15 people were killed in bomb blasts and a shooting in Iraq on Wednesday, police and hospital sources said.

Ten people were killed when two car bombs exploded near government buildings in the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

Relations between Iraq's Shi'ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish communities have come under growing strain since U.S. troops left the country in December 2011.

The conflict in neighboring Syria has also put pressure on Iraq's delicate intercommunal balance.

"There were two bodies on the ground outside the building, people were shouting and mess was everywhere," said Rawaa Rahman, a government employee in Kirkuk who was wounded in the hand.

Although violence is well below the height of sectarian slaughter in 2006-7, Sunni Islamist insurgents still carry out almost daily attacks to try to undermine the Shi'ite led government.

The violence continued elsewhere. A suicide bomber on a motorcycle blew himself up near a police patrol in northern Baghdad, killing at least two policemen, police said.

A roadside bomb killed one policeman and wounded two others in a town near Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police and medic sources said.

Two gunmen were killed by the army when they attacked a military checkpoint in a village south of Mosul.