A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt Saturday at a restaurant popular with police in an Iraqi city that was once a flash point for sectarian slaughter, killing at least two people, authorities said. The attack came the same day an al Qaeda front group in Iraq claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing Tuesday at Baghdad's main crime lab that killed 22 people.

The attacks appeared aimed at rattling and embarrassing the US-backed Iraqi leadership before national elections in March. In Saturday's attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a falafel restaurant near a famed Shiite shrine in the Sunni-dominated city of Samarra, 60 miles (95 kilometres) north of Baghdad, a police official said. Twenty-five people were wounded, he added. A medical official at the Samarra hospital confirmed the casualties, saying at least five of the wounded were in critical condition. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information.

Copyright Associated Press, 2010