Kirkuk gunmen killed by police

Iraqi police battled with and killed two gunmen in the oil-rich northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk early today, a day after a suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded nearly 100 after striking outside a bank as elderly people waited to cash their pension cheques.

Elsewhere, five Iraqi soldiers were killed and two wounded in a suicide car bombing at a checkpoint in Kan’an, 30 miles north of Baghdad, and the bodies of 24 men – victims of recent insurgent ambushes in the west of the country – were transported to a hospital in the capital.