BAGHDAD, March 20: A US soldier was killed and three others wounded when a roadside bomb hit their patrol on Sunday in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, the US military said. The attack happened at about 10:30 am (0730 GMT), said a military statement without giving further details.

Three Iraqi policemen were killed and seven wounded in ethnically-tense Kirkuk on Saturday.

The US death raised to 1,510 soldiers and military personnel killed in Iraq since the US invasion two years ago, according to an estimate based on the latest tally from the Pentagon.

The director of the police anti-corruption department in the Iraqi city of Mosul was assassinated by a suicide bomber on Sunday, and gunmen later opened fire on his funeral procession, killing two mourners.

The US military said the bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body in the building where Brigadier Walid Kashmoula worked. Both were killed and one person was wounded.

Al Qaeda’s wing in Iraq said it had assassinated “the apostate Walid Kashmoula who is the top American agent” in the area.

“This will be the fate of those who stand by the polytheists,” Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq said in a statement posted on a website.—AFP/Reuters