Baghdad - Two Iraqi police officers were killed and 22 injured on Sunday in a bomb attack outside the police academy in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

A suicide bomber detonated the car he was driving as groups of volunteers were leaving the academy, a police spokesman told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa. Ten of the injured are in critical condition.

Earlier Sunday, three Iraqis were killed and six injured in a bomb attack northeast of Baquba. It went off near a civilian vehicle in the Murgana area, 155 kilometres from the city, Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency reported.

Baquba, 57 kilometres northeast of Baghdad, is the capital of Diala province, which extends to the Iranian border.

Iraqi security forces in the province launched a new military operation Sunday aimed at clearing out al-Qaeda strongholds, the director of the National Command Centre at the Interior Ministry told VOI.

Since late July 2008, Iraqi security forces have been conducting a wide-scale security operation, codenamed Bashaer al-Kheir, against al-Qaeda operatives and their sympathizers. (dpa)