(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-08 17:29

BAIJI, Iraq -- A suicide car bomb exploded in a residential neighbourhood in northern Iraq on Saturday, a Reuters witness said. Police said at least eight people were killed and 40 wounded.

A Reuters television cameraman said at least 11 cars were destroyed and 15 houses damaged by the blast, which targeted the home of an anti-terrorism official in a residential area in Baiji, a northern Iraqi town with a large oil refinery.

The Reuters cameraman, who lives nearby, said he heard the blast at 7:15 a.m. (0415 GMT) when a vehicle drove up and exploded.

Most of the victims were neighbours in houses that were also damaged. The counter-terrorism official, Colonel Ali Shaker, was among the wounded, the cameraman said.

Iraq has seen a dramatic fall in violence in the past few months after Washington dispatched 30,000 extra troops. US commanders say Sunni Islamist al Qaeda militants remain a formidable foe, committed to attempting large-scale attacks.

As the Sunni Arab militants have been pushed out of other areas, they have regrouped in the provinces north of Baghdad, which is now the focus of fighting.

Suicide bombers killed at least 26 people in two attacks in the province of Diyala north of Baghdad on Friday.

In one of those attacks, a woman who security sources said had lost three of her adult sons in operations by Iraqi forces detonated a vest packed with explosives, killing 16 bystanders.

In the south overnight, an explosion destroyed the home of Uday Hamid, a local leader of the movement of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the town of Numaniya, killing him, his wife and two children as they slept.

Police said they believed it might have been a bomb but could not be certain of the cause of the blast.