Mosul - Iraqi security forces on Thursday safely detonated a car bomb in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki campaigned in the city two days before Iraq's provincial elections, local media reported.

"An Iraqi army force on Thursday managed to detonate a car crammed with explosives in the Baath neighbourhood of eastern Mosul, without casualties," a security source told the Voices of Iraq news agency.

Al-Maliki was visiting Mosul, capital the ethnically diverse and divided province of Nineveh, to campaign for candidates from the ruling coalition running for election to provincial councils there.

As Nineveh prepares to vote in provincial council elections, Mosul has seen a series of sectarian attacks.

On Tuesday, a car bomb exploded near the offices of a Kurdish political party in Mosul, killing at least three Iraqi soldiers.

On January 18, a suicide bomber killed Hassan al-Luhaibi, a former general in Saddam Hussein's army, then deputy to prominent Sunni leader Salah al-Mutlaq and campaign manager for al-Mutlaq's National Dialogue Front in Nineveh and in Salah al-Din provinces.

And last November, some 10,000 Christian families fled Mosul after 15 Christians were murdered. (dpa)