BAGHDAD, Sept 27: Twelve people were killed in fresh violence across Iraq on Monday, as an Iranian diplomat kidnapped two months ago by the same extremist group holding two French reporters was released.

Meanwhile British Muslim leaders wrapped up a mission in Iraq to try to save British hostage Kenneth Bigley with no word on the fate of the 62-year-old engineer whose two US colleagues were executed last week.

Five Iraqis were killed in a US air strike on the radical Shia slum of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, another five Iraqi civilians died in a roadside bomb attack north of the capital, and two national guardsmen were killed in a car bombing in northern Iraq.

A Sadr City hospital official said five people were killed in the latest US air raid on the neighbourhood, a stronghold of militants loyal to Moqtada Sadr. The US military said it had killed four targeted militants and destroyed rebel positions in the strikes. Five Iraqi farmers were killed and one injured in a roadside bombing near Baquba, north of Baghdad, police and witnesses said.

Insurgents in Mosul detonated a car bomb against an Iraqi national guard patrol, killing two guardsmen and wounding three, medical and security sources said. The US military announced it had detained a senior national guard commander for eastern Iraq on suspicion of links with insurgents.

Meanwhile, Iranian diplomat Fereydun Jahani, who was kidnapped on Aug 4 on the road from Baghdad to Karbala, where he had been appointed to open an Iranian consulate, was released.

The diplomat spoke to AFP at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad and said no deal had been struck to end his 55-day ordeal. "Their first claim was the non-interference of Iran in Iraq's internal affairs," he said. "When they understood that Iran had no such intentions and that we diplomats were here to serve Iranians living in Iraq, they decided to release me." -AFP