Bombing, Shelling Kill 12 near Baghdad as 5 Die in Kirkuk Blast

A suicide bombing and shelling killed 12 people and wounded at least 23 south of Baghdad Wednesday, officials said, as Iraq struggles to stem a major militant offensive.

The bomber detonated explosives in a market in Mahmudiyah, while shellfire struck various areas of the town.

A major Sunni jihadist offensive, led by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has overrun chunks of five provinces north and west of Baghdad since June 9.

Meanwhile, a car bomb in a Kurdish-majority neighborhood of the ethnically mixed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk killed five people on Wednesday evening, security and medical officials said.

Twenty more people were wounded by the blast in the northern part of the tinderbox oil hub, which lies at the heart of territory Iraq's Kurds want to incorporate into their autonomous region over the objections of Baghdad.

Two of the dead were Kurdish security force members.

While the federal government has not abandoned its opposition to Kurdish claims, Kurdish peshmerga forces are now responsible for its external security after the army abandoned its positions in the face of a Sunni Arab  militant offensive led by the ISIL.

The insurgent onslaught, which began on June 9, has overrun swathes of five provinces north and west of Baghdad, including mainly Sunni Arab towns in the west of Kirkuk province.

After initially wilting when confronted with the militant advance, security forces have improved their performance. However, that has been limited to maintaining territory, rather than launching any major counter-offensive.