Baghdad (AP) Officials say a car bomb has exploded near the government office in the northern city of Mosul and 18 people are dead.

The governor of surrounding Nineveh Province says about 60 others were wounded in the blast. The governor was inspecting damage from a rocket that landed in the area when the bomb went off but he is uninjured.

Elsewhere, police say a suicide bomber detonated an explosive belt inside a municipal government building west of Baghdad, killing at least 12 people at a meeting of tribal sheiks opposed to Al-Qaida.

The attack occurred in the town of Karmah about 30 miles west of Baghdad. It's the third assault against a municipal government meeting in Iraq this week. Four Americans were among ten people killed in an attack Tuesday.