[Asharq al-Aswat] A suicide truck bomber hit a residential area of a Kurdish village in northern Iraq before dawn Thursday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 30 others, officials said, in what appeared to be the latest in a string of ethnic attacks in the region. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, but it bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents who remain active in Mosul and surrounding areas.A police officer and health official in Mosul said the bomb went off around 12:30 a.m. in the village of Wardek, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southeast of the city -- a region where U.S. commanders have warned that insurgents appear to be trying to stoke an Arab-Kurdish conflict.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.
The blast took down a number of houses and the casualty toll was expected to rise because many people are still missing in the rubble, the officials said.
Local security forces intercepted a second suicide truck bomber, killing the driver and defusing the bomb before it could be detonated, they said.