Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility in an internet statement for a bombing carried out by a woman against an Iraqi police centre in Tal Afar.

"An honourable and martyrdom-seeking sister from al-Baraa bin Malek Brigade ... carried out a heroic attack this Wednesday morning against a group of volunteers to the ranks of apostasy ... at an apostate recruitment centre in Tal Afar," the statement said.

The statement, whose authenticity could not be confirmed, was signed by al-Qaida Group in Mesopotamia.

It was posted on an Islamist website regularly used by Iraqi anti-US groups.

The statement said the woman bomber carried out the attack in defence of "her religion and honour".

It did not mention any dead at the Iraqi police recruitment office in Tal Afar city, saying the bomber had caused injuries among the group.

Female bomber

But Iraqi security and hospital sources said at least six Iraqis were killed and 30 others injured.

Bashar Sameer, an Iraqi journalist, told Aljazeera the bomber was a woman wearing a belt of explosives that she set off on Wednesday at 9am (0600 GMT) in front an Iraqi army volunteers' centre in Tal Afar, a mixed city 150km east of the Syrian border and 420km northwest of Baghdad.

Sameer said five civilians in addition to the bomber were killed and 53 others were injured, five of them seriously, in the explosion.

The same centre was recently the target of another attack, Sameer added.

Agencies quoted police Brigadier Saeed Ahmed al-Jibori as saying the attacker set off the charges while standing among job applicants in Tal Afar.

On 8- 12 September, US-led forces routed armed fighters from Tal Afar in a major offensive, killing nearly 200 suspected fighters and capturing 315, Iraq's military said.

Diplomats attacked

An Iraqi policemen and a civilian were killed when they were caught in gunfire against a Jordanian embassy car in Baghdad on Wednesday, a government official said.

"A Jordanian embassy car came under fire in Baghdad this morning when terrorists opened fire on the vehicle," the official said in a statement carried by the state-run Petra news agency.

None of the car's passengers were hurt, but the driver of a civilian car and an Iraqi policeman behind the Jordanian diplomatic car were killed.

Amman has withheld plans to raise its diplomatic representation in Iraq, which is currently run by a charge d'affaires, amid security concerns in the violence-ridden country where several diplomats have been the targeted.

Earlier this month, Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher said Jordan would not reveal when its new ambassador to Iraq, Ahmad Lawzi, would take up his duties.

Violence
Also on Wednesday, a US soldier was killed and another wounded in a bomb attack near Safwan in southern Iraq, close to the Kuwaiti border, the US military said.

The latest death brings to at least 1917 the number of US military personnel killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

Another five civilian Defence Department employees have also been killed, according to Pentagon figures.

In Baquba, east of Baghdad, a car bomber killed a civilian and wounded 13 people at a police checkpoint on Wednesday, police said. Eight of those wounded were policeman.

The killing comes just a day after a bomber attacked a police recruitment centre in the same town, some 60km north of the capital, killing 10 people.

PHOTO CAPTION

A man wounded after bomb attack in Tal Afar, September 28, 2005. (Reuters)