Suicide bombers have killed at least 27 people in a series of attacks across Iraq, including an attack at a Baghdad restaurant near the heavily fortified Green Zone compound.

Near the northern city of Mosul, a suicide car bomb killed 10 people and wounded 20 on Monday, in an attack on the office of a Kurdish political party, police said.

The explosion occurred near the office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Tal Isquf, a Christian village north of Mosul, Abdul Gani Ali, a spokesman for the party, said.

Witnesses said that the attacker detonated a car loaded with explosives between the party offices and a social club in the village. Some of the victims were thought to be Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

In the city of Baquba, in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber rammed his vehicle into a police building, killing 10 people and wounding 10 others, police said.

Baghdad attacks

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber attacked a restaurant in the district of Karradet Mariam, a mixed Sunni-Shia neighbourhood less than 100 metres from the Green Zone which houses various government buildings and embassies.

Police said the man was wearing an explosive belt when he walked into Al-Yasmin restaurant at around 11am.

They said seven people were killed and an additional 16 people were wounded.

A parked car bomb also exploded in Karradet outside the Iranian Embassy around noon, killing one civilian, and drive-by shooters attacked guards outside Tunisia's embassy, Iraqi police said.

Two guards were injured in the shooting outside the Tunisian embassy in Mansour, a mostly Sunni district in western Baghdad, police said.

PHOTO CAPTION

A man stands at the scene of a bomb attack in Baghdad April 23, 2007. (Reuters)

News Agencies