Over 25 killed in Iraq violence (Roundup)

At least 27 people were killed and about 150 others injured in separate incidents of violence in Iraq Sunday.

Up to 15 people were killed and some 122 others wounded when two suicide car bombs went off in a village near the city of Tal Afar in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, an official told Xinhua.

"The reports said that a total of five policemen, school principal and nine school children were killed and 122 people were wounded in the two suicide car bombs near a school and a police station in the village of Qabat," Abdul- Aal al-Abbasi, an official in Tal Afar local government, told Xinhua over telephone.

Most of the wounded were school children and many of them were in critical condition, Abbasi said.

One of the blasts occurred when a suicide bomber blew up a truck loaded with explosives near a primary school in a predominantly Shiite Turkoman village outside the city of Tal Afar, about 430 km north of the Iraq's capital Baghdad, Abbasi said.

The explosion damaged part of the school building. The Iraqi security forces and rescue teams rushed to the scenes to remove the debris of building in search for victims, Abbasi added.

Another car bomb went off near a police station in the same area, Abbasi said without giving further details.

Ambulances, police and civilian vehicles are evacuating the victims to medical centers in nearby Tal Afar city, he added.

The predominantly Sunni Nineveh province and its capital Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad, have long been a stronghold of insurgent groups, including Al Qaeda militants, since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In a separate incident, up to 12 Shia pilgrims were killed and 25 others wounded in a suicide bomb attack Sunday in the northern part of Iraq's capital Baghdad.

The attack occurred in the afternoon when a suicide bomber blew up his explosive vest among a crowd of Shia pilgrims in Seliekh district in the northern part of Baghdad, Xinhua cited a source as saying.

The attack came as thousands of Shia pilgrims walked from various Baghdad districts in processions to commemorate the death of Imam Mohammed al-Jawad, the ninth of the 12 most revered Shia Imams, whose tomb is located in the centre of the old part of the holy Shia Kadhimiya district.

Earlier, the source had put the death toll at one.

Iraq is witnessing its worst eruption of violence in recent years, which raises fears that the country is sliding back to the full-blown civil conflict that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when monthly death toll sometimes exceeded 3,000.

The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq has said that almost 6,000 civilians were killed and over 14,000 others injured in Iraq from January to September this year.