At least 18 people died in violence in northern Iraq today, police said.
A suicide bomber killed 10 people when he drove his car packed with explosives on to a sports field in Hadhar, 90 kilometres to the south of Mosul, where a police team were playing a local side.
Police said the car ploughed into a group of police spectators, killing three policemen and seven civilians.
Twelve people were wounded. In Mosul, a police colonel and two bodyguards were killed by a car bomb in the ethnically diverse city, which is 390 kilometres north of Baghdad.
At least one more policeman and four militants were killed in Mosul during six hours of heavy clashes between insurgents and US and Iraqi security forces, police said. Police later said they had the western half of Mosul, which is divided by the Tigris river, under control.
The United States recently announced that it was moving more than 3,500 troops from Mosul to Baghdad to help rein in worsening sectarian violence there.