Truck bomb kills 14 in Kurdish capital

The attack came as US Vice President Dick Cheney began an unannounced visit to Baghdad to urge Iraqi leaders to speed a process of national reconciliation.

The Arbil blast tore a two meter deep hole into the facade of the autonomous northern region's interior ministry, scattering the bodies of dead and injured outside the heavily guarded building.

Kurdistan's health minister, Zirian Abdelrahman, said 19 were people killed, although his colleague at the interior ministry later gave a lower toll.

"It was a truck bomb carrying cleaning products that targeted our ministry and killed 14 people and wounded 87, including government employees," regional interior minister Karim Sinajri told journalists shortly after the attack.

The blast site was a scene of chaos as rescue workers rushed to evacuate the wounded. Few panes of glass were left intact in nearby buildings and children's shoes lay scattered in the rubble.

"We cannot accuse anyone specific but, as we know, terrorists did this," added Sinjari. "Our ministry was attacked because it does such a good job fighting terrorism."

Suspicion, fell immediately on Ansar al-Sunna, an extremist Islamist group that grew out of the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam movement and is active in northern parts of the country.