A car bomb exploded in a market in the northern Iraqi town of Tal Afar on Wednesday, killing 12 people and wounding 30, a police officer and a medic told AFP.
The explosives-filled car was parked on the side of a road in the market in Tal Afar's Hal al-Taliyah neighbourhood, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Doctor Tareq al-Obeidi from the public hospital in Tal Afar, 60 kilometres (37 miles) west of Mosul, said that the dead and wounded were being brought to his facility.
The explosion took place at around 7:30 pm (1630 GMT) in Tal Afar, which in March 2006 was hailed as a model town by US President George W. Bush but which exactly a year later witnessed one of the biggest attacks in Iraq in which more than 150 people were killed in a truck bombing.
Mosul, the third largest city of Iraq, and the region surrounding it has witnessed sustained insurgent attacks.
Earlier Wednesday two car bombs in Mosul killed two people and wounded 13, police said.
On Tuesday, two suicide attacks killed at least nine people in Mosul.
The US military says Mosul is the last urban bastion of Al-Qaeda in Iraq militants who had been chased out of other dangerous regions such as Baghdad, Anbar and Diyala.
A widespread Iraqi military assault is currently underway in Mosul, while Diyala continues to have a strong presence of Al-Qaeda.
