A suicide bomber in police uniform killed a top police official in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday as he toured the site of an explosion that killed 40 people and wounded 220 a day earlier, officials said.Rescuers were sifting through the rubble of Wednesday's blast for survivors when the attacker blew up beside the Nineveh province police director, Brigadier-General Salih Mohammed Hasan Atiya al-Jubouri, U.S. military and Iraqi officials said.
They said the bomber walked up to Jubouri as he toured the site of Wednesday's blast -- which left a crater as deep as a multi-storey building -- and detonated an explosive-packed vest. Jubouri died of his wounds while being rushed to hospital.
Iraqi police had earlier incorrectly identified the official killed as Brigadier-General Salih Mohammed Hasan, police chief in the Nineveh provincial capital Mosul.
The U.S. military said two Iraqi police were also killed in Thursday's blast. Police said an Iraqi journalist working for the Chinese state news agency Xinhua was among five wounded, though no more information was immediately available. The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier was also wounded.