Baghdad - Ninety Iraqi civilians were wounded by a car bomb blast in Mosul, northern Iraq, while three US soldiers and an interpreter were killed in an attack in the same restive province of Nineveh, US military statements said Wednesday.

The three soldiers and the interpreter were killed in "an improvised explosive device attack" in the province on Tuesday evening, the US military said, while in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh, 90 civilians were injured in the car bomb attack which the statement blamed on the al-Qaeda in Iraq group.

In another incident five people from the same family were killed on Wednesday in a US airstrike on their home in a town near Tikrit, 170 kilometres north of Baghdad, witnesses told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

The US airstrike killed an Iraq man, his wife and three children, all of whom were aged under 12, the witnesses said. Two people in a nearby house were also injured. (dpa)