Police Brigadier General Mohammed Alwagaa said a senior police officer was among those killed in the attack in the town of Makhmur, 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Baghdad, and that the local mayor was also wounded.

The health minister in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Zirian Abdel Rahman, told AFP that scores of wounded people were being brought north to the Kurdish capital of Arbil for treatment.

Makhmur is a mixed town on the border between the Kurdish authority and Iraq's Nineveh Province. Abdel Rahman said that the compound was hosting a meeting of local officials when the attack took place.

The local offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Kurdish leader Massud Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Iraq's President Jalal Talabani were hit, and many local officials were among the wounded, police said.