At least 10 people were killed in Iraq yesterday, including four in the Shia holy town of Kufa, while security forces launched an assault in the oil region of Kirkuk to flush out Sunni insurgents.

A bomb believed hidden in a bag killed four people, including two children, in a busy marketplace in Kufa, a medic and police official said.

Khalid al-Yassiri from the health department of Najaf, the main city close to Kufa, said four people died in the blast and seven others were wounded. "Two of the dead are children," Yassiri said.

Najaf police chief Abdel Karim Mustafa said the bomb went off in the middle of a Kufa market. "We suspect two people who were wounded to be behind the explosion. They will be interrogated," he said.