BAGHDAD, April 30: At least 23 people were killed when a suicide bomber struck a Shia family wake in the restive province of Diyala on Monday, raising the day's death toll in violence-plagued Iraq to more than 40.

“A man wearing a suicide belt walked into the Shia wake and just blew himself up,” said Captain Ahmed Abdallah of the local police in Khalis, 80 kilometres northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province.

He said at least 23 people were killed and 17 wounded.

The province, which is religiously and ethnically mixed, has seen some of the fiercest fighting in Iraq in recent weeks, believed to be the work of insurgents who fled a major security crackdown in Baghdad.

More than 20 other people were killed in attacks elsewhere in the country as insurgents continued to target civilians and police.

Four Iraqis were killed and six wounded when a truck bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the western town of Hit, Dr Abdel Karim al-Hiti from the local medical centre said.

A police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber who hit the Al-Zawiya restaurant.

In Baghdad, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle outside a police headquarters in a western district, killing five people and wounding 12, a security official said.

The Iraqi police have come under heavy fire in recent months as they struggle to clamp down on the city's daily mayhem as part of a 10-week-old security plan.

Elsewhere in the capital, a former brigadier general in Saddam Hussein's army was shot dead in the volatile southern neighbourhood of Dura, and three civilians were killed in two separate roadside bombings.

The two blasts wounded 10 people, security and medical sources said.

At least one person was killed and six wounded in a car bombing in the southwestern neighbourhood of Al-Bayaa, the site of several recent attacks.

Another person was killed and nine wounded when three mortar rounds slammed into the northeastern Shiite neighbourhood of Al-Shaab.

The bodies of another three people killed in a gunfight in the capital were brought to Al-Yarmuk hospital in west Baghdad, the hospital said.

Further south, gunmen ambushed a checkpoint outside the city of Kut, killing two policemen before fleeing, police Lieutenant Naim Hassan said.

Earlier in the day, authorities found six corpses, two of them decapitated, in an area north of the city.

In the northern city of Mosul, authorities arrested 61 suspected militants following an overnight shootout at a police station.

“A number of gunmen attacked Al-Waqqas police station in western Mosul prompting the police to counterattack and kill four gunmen,” said police Colonel Mohammed al-Waggaa.

A remotely detonated car bomb exploded near reinforcements who were racing to the scene, killing one policeman and wounding two.

Authorities detained another 77 suspected militants in other parts of the country.—AFP